The firm announced it would pay Thermo Fisher Scientific $1.06bn (€780m) for its gene modulation and magnetic beads units on Monday in a deal prompted by the latter’s efforts to comply with EU competition laws ahead of its purchase of Life Technologies.
The Thermo units GE is buying are based in the US from where they will continue to operate according to Nigel Darby, Vice President BioProcess, GE Healthcare Life Sciences.
He told BioPharma-Reporter.com that: “It is intended that the businesses will continue to operate from their respective facilities. The cell culture media and sera business will continue to be run from Utah, and the gene modulation business will continue to be run from Colorado.
In addition to the two US sites, the divested Thermo units have facilities in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Belgium, which also look likely to be kept on.
Darby said: “HyClone’s state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities will strengthen and expand GE’s supply chain capabilities in Asia, the Americas and Europe” adding that “The businesses will become part of GE Healthcare’s Life Sciences, which is headquartered in the UK. As the deal hasn’t closed, it is too early to talk in more detail.”
The Thermo businesses employ 625 people and while it looks like some staff will be joining GE, Darby did not say how many when we asked.
“This proposed acquisition is about growth, encompassing business lines that truly add new competences and new technologies. GE Healthcare highly values the employees who would be joining GE as part of this acquisition.
“The expertise and knowledge of Thermo Fisher’s employees will be critical in the continuing growth of the GE Healthcare Life Sciences business.”
Technology expansion
If the deal HyClone deal is completed GE stands to further expand its biomanufacturing offering like it did when it bought Wave Biotech and Xcellerex, which was also a driver according to Darby.
“The addition of HyClone cell culture media and sera products to GE Healthcare’s business will allow us to offer customers a substantially wider range of fully integrated products and services for biopharmaceutical manufacturing and biomedical research.
“The [HyClone] RNAi gene modulation technologies have a strong strategic fit with GE’s established technologies for drug discovery research,” he said adding that “The Sera-Mag magnetic bead separation business is complementary to GE’s existing capabilities in protein analysis and medical diagnostics.”