GÖTTINGEN, Germany—Laboratory equipment provider Sartorius AG announced a binding agreement with French biopharmaceutical supplier Stedim Biosystems SA that will see it take a majority position with the smaller company and fold its biotechnology division into Stedim. The combined company will be renamed Sartorius Stedim Biotech SA.

"In establishing this alliance between two companies focused on the same customers and with complementary product portfolios, our first objective will be to implement a strategic and an industrial project with an impact much greater than the sum of the two parts," said Bernard Lemaitre, Stedim chairman. "Once combined, Sartorius Biotechnology and Stedim have the realistic ambition of forming a worldwide market leader for single-use based technologies over the next five years. No other group can offer the biopharmaceutical market such a broad range of solutions." 

As indicated, the combined company hopes to grab a larger share of the growing biosupply marketplace, particularly in the single-use consumables sector. In 2006, Stedim earned €91.4 million in sales, almost half of which were generated in the United States.