Genevac

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Genevac Ltd

Genevac Ltd[1] (Genevac Inc - US subsidiary) is a specialist vacuum engineering company, specialising in the design and manufacture of parallel evaporation systems. Genevac is wholly owned by Fisher Scientific International [2]- although due to the proposed takeover by Thermo Electron Corporation the Federal Trade Commission has ruled that Genevac must be divested[http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2006/10/thermo.htm FTC Charges That Thermo Electron’s Acquisition of Fisher Scientific Would Lessen Competition in U.S. Market for Centrifugal Vacuum Evaporators]. The takeover of Fisher Scientific by Thermo Electron Corporation closed on 9th November 2006, since then Genevac has been operating under a 'Hold Separate' by the FTC. Thermo Electron Corporation has been granted 150 days to find a new owner for Genevac.

Fisher Scientific Inc is one of the largest worldwide distributors of laboratory products, serving the needs of pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, clinical, research and industrial laboratories. Fisher, through the acquisition of Apogent Technologies Inc. in August 2004, is now also a developer and manufacturer of value-added products for the clinical and research markets. Over 80% of the Company’s products are consumables. Fisher's operating subsidiaries manufacture most of their products in approximately 80 facilities worldwide.

Company Origins

Genevac Ltd was founded in 1990 by Michael Cole. At this time, the small, family owned business specialised in the manufacture of corrosion proof [[vacuum pump]]s and centrifugal evaporators for the life science research laboratory.

Centrifugal evaporation involves the use of lowered pressure to reduce the boiling points of solvents thereby accelerating their evaporation. Samples are placed in a rotor and spun during the drying process to prevent violent solvent boiling (known as "bumping[3]").

Michael Cole invented the revolutionary CVP (Cole Vacuum Pump) to provide the world's first corrosion proof high vacuum, low maintenance laboratory pump. The CVP pump originally formed the backbone of all Genevac vacuum systems to provide unparalleled levels of performance. The evaporation systems produced between 1990 and 1995 were very compact bench top systems for general-purpose use in life science research.

With advances made in technology, this has now been superseded with the Scroll vacuum pump. Developed by BOC Edwards, with assistance from Genevac, and based on the "scroll" principle. The scroll pump takes it’s name from the design of the pump head, where a series of crescent shaped scrolls cut into an oscillating rotor are used to repeatedly compress and decompress the gas or vapour to be pumped.

1995 - The Emerging Combinatorial Chemistry Market

In conjunction with the emergence of new technologies to speed up drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry, the company focussed on developing a new class of laboratory evaporation equipment specifically designed for combinatorial chemistry and its related applications.

Combinatorial techniques demand high throughput, high performance laboratory synthesis, solvent evaporation and purification equipment capable of operating in a production environment. Genevac became the first manufacturer to build solvent evaporation systems for combinatorial chemistry. Until the advent of the Genevac centrifugal evaporator, the only method open to chemists was a rotary evaporator which could only accept one sample at a time. Genevac currently manufacture a range of standard systems from the compact bench-top EZ-2 and HT-4X systems to ultra-high throughput Mega 980 and Mega 1200 production scale systems.

The success of the combinatorial chemistry systems launched in 1995 gave rise to accelerated company growth. The systems are currently used in most major pharmaceutical research laboratories worldwide. The company won the Queen's Award for Innovation in 2000 in recognition of the innovations incorporated into the products.

New Ownership

Apogent Technologies Inc. acquired Genevac in May 2000, incorporating us into an expanding group of market-leading drug discovery equipment and consumable companies. Apogent was in turn merged with Fisher Scientific IncFisher Scientific]. during 2004 to form a worldwide group with operating revenues in excess of $5 billion with design, manufacturing and distribution companies in all the major laboratory markets.

Genevac currently employs around 85 people, most based at the manufacturing, R&D and marketing headquarters in Ipswich, England. A US subsidiary is based in Valley Cottage, NY. The US operation provides sales, service and technical support to our customers in the US. Sales and service representatives are based local to most of our customers on the East Coast, Mid West and West Coast. In Europe we have sales and service staff based at offices in Lyon, France and Wiesbaden, Germany to provide efficient service to our key European customers. Elsewhere, Genevac products are sold and supported via a global network of distributors located strategically to serve the drug discovery industry

Genevac endeavours to provide the highest quality products, service and support. This is achieved through a unique range of innovative, high performance products and a commitment to customer satisfaction, resulting in the Company achieving the status of ISO 9001 2000 certification during 2004.