MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
Avantor to buy lab supply firm VWR
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK
$6.4 billion acquisition continues consolidation trend in lab supply business Avantor, controlled by the private equity firm New Mountain Capital, has reached an agreement to buy VWR for $6.4 billion. The deal will create a global supplier of lab equipment, including autosamplers, office furniture, chromatography media, and reagents. The acquisition combines Avantor, a minnow among laboratory supply firms with about $700 million in annual sales, with VWR, a whale in the industry with $4.5 billion in sales. It continues a trend of consolidation among laboratory suppliers. Madison Dearborn Partners, a private equity firm that controls about one-third of VWR’s shares, has agreed to vote its shares in favor of the merger. New Mountain says it will continue as lead shareholder of the new entity. Avantor CEO Michael Stubblefield
will lead the combined firm. “We will bring together our Laboratory chemical makers are a hot commodity. well-known expertise in ultra-high-purity materials and customized and operates out of 170 facilities in 34 counsolutions with VWR’s global scale, unpartries. Besides distributing lab products, alleled channel access, and deep customer including some Avantor-manufactured relationships,” he says. lab chemicals, VWR has been growing its The combined entity will be in a better portfolio of chemicals over the past two position to compete in a consolidating years by acquiring companies such as reindustry. Germany’s Merck KGaA, for inagents maker Seastar Chemicals and active stance, created a lab supply powerhouse pharmaceutical ingredients maker Reliable with its 2015 acquisition of Sigma-Aldrich Biopharmaceutical. for $17 billion. Merck now has annual sales Avantor was created when New Mounof lab products exceeding $6 billion. Hontain bought Mallinckrodt Baker from medeywell recently beefed up its lab chemicals ical supply firm Covidien in 2010. Avantor business with the purchase of an inorganics has made a number of acquisitions since and solvents business orphaned in the Sig2010, including the pharmaceutical buffers ma-Aldrich transaction. maker Puritan Products and RFCL, an VWR, which traces its roots back 160 Indian supplier of laboratory reagents and years, employs more than 10,000 people consumables.—MARC REISCH
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