Perkin Elmer strengthens OneSource with C&A purchase

BOSTON—Perkin Elmer Inc. announced early last month it had acquired U.K.-based Clinical & Analytical Service Solutions Ltd. (C&A), a scientific equipment asset and management maintenance company serving the life science industry. Specific terms of the deal, including the purchase price for C&A, which booked sales of roughly $7.5 million in 2005, were not disclosed.

With the acquisition complete, the C&A staff will be folded into PerkinElmer's existing laboratory service offering called OneSource. The deal also highlights a con­tinuing trend among life science operations around the world—the outsourcing of labora­tory equipment maintenance and manage­ment, a market that PerkinElmer estimates to be more $2.5 billion annually.

"Our customers are feeling a lot of pres­sure these days to be more productive in their operations," says Dusty Tenney, VP and GM for laboratory services for PerkinElmer's OneSource. "Taking this time-consuming activity out of their hands allows them to spend more time on science and increase the productivity in the lab."

The acquisition of C&A, while not a huge player in the market, is a good strategic fit Tenney says because of its existing relation­ships with significant players in pharmaceu­tical and biotech companies, working rela­tionships with a broad network of indepen­dent service providers (ISPs) and because of its strong growth curve.

"This is a proven solution for cost reduc­tion and increased service levels which can be used to consolidate the management of a wide portfolio of equipment mod­els found in a typical laboratory environment into a single mainte­nance program," says Ken Caskie, managing director of C&A.

Indeed, one attractive aspect of C&A to PerkinElmer, Tenney notes, was its broad-based knowl­edge of a number of different OEM platforms both internal and via its network of ISPs with specific knowl­edge of a variety of diverse instru­ment platforms.