Analytik Jena said today it will expand its life sciences business into the U.S. by acquiring UVP and its wholly owned European subsidiary Ultra-Violet Products for an undisclosed price.

UVP provides predominantly digital imaging systems for applications in proteomics, genomics, and plant and animal sciences through its bioimaging systems business. The company also operates business units focusing on ultraviolet products, custom-designed ultraviolet light sources such as ultraviolet Pen-Ray Lamps, and laboratory products for electrophoresis, blotting, hybridization, and proteomics.

German-owned Analytik Jena provides instruments for the life sciences, as well as for the analytical measuring technology and optoelectronics markets, in addition to laboratory software management and information systems, service offerings, device-specific consumables, and disposables, such as reagents.

By acquiring UVP, Analytik Jena said, it anticipates “a significant increase” in revenues and earnings for its life sciences unit, enabling it to reach positive earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) during the second half of the current financial year, which ends September 30. Publicly traded Analytik Jena said it anticipates 2013–14 life sciences sales above €40 million ($51.3 million), and an operating earnings margin of 4% to 7%.

That would be a nearly 42% jump from the €28.2 million ($36.2 million) in revenue reported by life sciences for 2011/12, all but flat from the previous year’s €28.3 million ($36.3 million). “Double-digit growth in revenue from PCR products and reagents meant that we were able to compensate for the lower revenue from two subsidiaries,” Analytik Jena CEO Klaus Berka, CEO said in a December 18, 2012, statement following release of fourth-quarter and full-year results.

He added: “We are working intensively on the international positioning of the comparatively young Life Science segment.”

Analytik Jena has two life-sci subsidiaries—CyBio which develops, sells, and services pipetting and plate-handling products; and Biometra, which manufactures and markets molecular biotech products using as core technologies Peltier-driven thermocyclers and electrophoresis instruments.

Companywide, Analytik Jena enjoyed better results for 2011/12, finishing with a 27% year-to-year gain in operating earnings, to €6.1 million ($7.8 million), on revenues that rose 8.9% from 2010/11, to €94 million ($120.6 million).

Created in 1932, UVP is headquartered in Upland, CA, with its Ultra-Violet Products subsidiary based in Cambridge, U.K. Privately-held UVP has 109 employees worldwide, and finished last year with revenues of about $17.2 million. About half the company’s sales are generated in North America.

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