Sartorius, a Goettingen, Germany-headquartered pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment supplier, has agreed to acquire Essen BioScience, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based provider of cell-based assays and instrumentation for drug discovery and basic research applications, from SFW Capital Partners, a Rye, New York-based private equity firm, for $320 million in cash.

Essen specializes in instrumentation, software and reagents for real-time live-cell imaging, and data analysis. The company achieved double-digit growth during the past few years and is expected to generate sales revenues of approximately $60 million in 2017. Essen has sales entities in the UK and Japan and currently employs approximately 150 people. The transaction, which is subject to antitrust clearance, is expected to close by the end of the first quarter 2017.

The acquisition expands Sartorius’ portfolio for bioanalytics, a field the company recently entered with its 2016 $90-million acquisition of IntelliCyt, an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based manufacturer of cell-screening platforms used in drug discovery.

Source: Sartorius