Bruker to acquire Michrom Bioresources

Bruker today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Michrom Bioresources, Inc. ('Michrom'), a 20 year old, privately owned company based in Auburn, California. Michrom provides liquid chromatography (LC) instrumentation, accessories, and consumables for applications in the life science, chemical and applied markets. In particular, Michrom recently has launched the novel Advance™ nanoflow ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) system and proprietary CaptiveSpray™ Ionization (CSI) sources for coupling to mass spectrometry (MS) in proteomics and other life-science applications.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed, and the closing is expected within weeks. Michrom's revenue was approximately $3 million in 2010. Bruker intends to retain all of Michrom's employees, and Michrom's founder and president, Mr. Kerry Nugent, is expected to join Bruker as 'Senior Vice President - Liquid Chromatography'.

In commenting on the agreement, Mr. Collin D'Silva, president of Bruker's Chemical & Applied Markets division, said: "Michrom's broad portfolio of novel technologies and high-performance products is highly complementary to our mass spectrometry products. In particular, Michrom's new high duty-cycle nanoflow UHPLC platform, along with their revolutionary CaptiveSpray™ LC-MS interface, together will provide our customers with significant gains in throughput, sensitivity and robustness for proteomics and other nano and capillary flow LC-MS applications."

Michrom's president Kerry Nugent expects the transaction to make Michrom's products more widely available to global customers seeking these key novel technologies. He commented: "With Bruker's Fremont, California manufacturing infrastructure and well-developed global distribution channels, we will be able to make greater strides to provide customers with advanced analytical solutions that embody technologies based on our expertise in biochemistry and micro-fluidics. I am very excited that the significant potential of our new technologies is now closer to being realized by more discerning customers."