News

Emerald expansion

Fisher Scientific has announced an agreement with Reagecon/Alkem of Shannon, County Clare to distribute its laboratory products in the Republic of Ireland.

Reagecon is a chemical measurement and laboratory equipment specialist and will be Fisher Scientific's sole representative for all product lines, from laboratory chemicals and apparatus to safety and specialist life-science research products.

Commenting on the arrangement, David Westwater, Managing Director of Fisher Scientific UK said, "We are delighted by this new business association. Reagecon is a perfect fit and this will enable us to provide the best service to our Irish customers."

Thermo named readers' choice

Thermo Electron Corporation has announced that its GRAMS™ desktop spectroscopy software is named the 2005 Readers' Choice Award winner for spectroscopy software in an annual survey conducted by Scientific Computing and Instrumentation, and that Thermo's SampleManager™ laboratory information management system and Atlas™ chromatography data system were finalists in the LIMS and CDS categories. Thermo is the only company with its products nominated in these three categories for 2005.

The winning nomination was for Thermo's GRAMS Suite — a desktop spectroscopy data processing and reporting software solution for visualizing, processing and managing spectroscopy data. GRAMS offers broad compatibility with many different instrument data types and a simple user interface. Life and analytical science researchers rely on GRAMS' powerful collection of processing routines to solve some of their most difficult data analysis problems. The GRAMS suite improves access to data while reducing the need for multiple software packages and associated training.

Sigma restructure

Sigma-Aldrich has recently announced a new organization consisting of four customer-centric business units, each headed by a president reporting to the Company's President and COO. The restructuring is intended to further enhance the company's ability to serve its diverse base of more than sixty thousand commercial accounts comprising one million individual customers worldwide and the potential for above market growth rates.

After an extensive six month study that included interviews with nearly 650 customers around the globe, the company is reorganizing its two existing life science and high technology research businesses — scientific research and biotechnology — into three units, each with its own distinctive competencies to meet the needs of carefully defined customer segments.

The company's final business, SAFC, which stands separate from these research units and represents 25% of the company's current sales after the recent acquisition of JRH Biosciences, offers fine chemical products and flexible service solutions for customers in the three key industrial market segments of pharma, biosciences and hi-tech. SAFC will continue to be led by Frank Wicks, 52, who has served as the unit's President since January 2003.

While these organizational changes are effective immediately, the company plans to continue to report its sales results for its three existing scientific research, biotechnology and SAFC business units through 2005 and begin reporting under the new four-unit structure in 2006.