Life Technologies Acquires BAC BV, Expands Capabilities in Bioprocessing

Life Technologies Corporation (LIFE) today announced its acquisition of BAC BV, a privately held company based in the Netherlands, and a leader in the discovery, development and manufacture of protein purification products. The acquisition expands Life's capabilities and product offerings in the growing market of biopharmaceutical research and manufacturing.

"Our acquisition of BAC BV positions Life Technologies as a leading provider of end-to-end solutions that are widely utilized in the bioprocess workflow," said Tony Hunt, head of BioProduction at Life Technologies. "Combining BAC's current portfolio and pipeline with our pre-existing portfolio expands Life's product offering and enables us to compete more fully across the protein purification market. We intend to immediately integrate the portfolios and leverage the Life commercial platform to drive accelerated growth in this market."

Bioprocessing is the production and analytical testing of biologically-based therapeutics, which are developed in cultured cells or microorganisms, and include drugs, vaccines, biosimilars, and gene and cell therapies. Life Technologies' Gibco® brand is the market leader in cell culture media, a position it has held for 50 years, and the company more recently integrated its POROS® brand of chromatography resins for purification of therapeutic products into the Bioproduction portfolio.

The acquisition expands Life's existing portfolio by adding BAC BV's unique set of innovative and proprietary affinity ligands to the company's world-class POROS® resins. Affinity ligands are molecules capable of binding with very high affinity to specific proteins, and are typically attached to chromatography resins in a production-scale, bio-purification process.

Life customers will benefit from a streamlined approach to protein purification with tailored end-to-end solutions. In addition to Gibco® culture media, POROS® resins and the BAC BV affinity ligand portfolio for protein purification, Life also offers the Applied Biosystems® SEQ rapid molecular kits for contaminant and impurity testing of bio-therapeutic products. 

"We are looking forward to developing and providing unique, enabling products from our combined portfolios and capabilities to our purification customers," said Laurens Sierkstra, Ph.D., chief executive officer of BAC BV. Sierkstra and an additional 34 employees will join Life Technologies. Current BAC BV facilities, a manufacturing site in Naarden and R&D facility in Leiden, Netherlands, will remain in operation.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The tuck-in acquisition of BAC BV is expected to be neutral to the company's overall ROIC three years after close.