The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and financial terms were not disclosed.
Ultra Scientific manufactures and supplies CRMs, organic and inorganic standards, calibration standards, IQ/OQ/PQ and quality control check standards.
It serves laboratory professionals in end markets including environmental, food, pharmaceutical, chemical and energy and academia and government.
Chemical standards expansion
Agilent was one of Ultra Scientific’s largest customers and the companies are long-term partners.
Mark Doak, president of Agilent’s CrossLab Group, said it identified chemical standards as an essential expansion area to being a complete workflow provider.
“Chemical standards are critical to customers’ analytical laboratory workflows and used to help customers qualify the performance of their methods to validate and quantitate their results.”
Steve Cohan, VP and general manager of Agilent’s Supplies Division, said: “This acquisition provides immediate core capabilities, bringing critical manufacturing and industry expertise in-house for the first time.”
In the past few months, Agilent signed a deal to acquire assets from Young In Scientific Co., a distributor of analytical and scientific instruments in South Korea and to acquire Genohm to boost its lab informatics business.
Ultra Scientific, based in North Kingstown, Rhode Island runs sales offices and distribution centers in Bologna, Italy and Wesel, Germany and has 52 employees.
William R. Russo, founder and VP, said: “Ultra is happy to announce that we are becoming part of Agilent Technologies, so that we may continue to supply all the requirements of the analytical field.”
John E. Russo, president of Ultra Scientific, said it has been working with Agilent to produce their instrument standards for more than 25 years.
“Ultra has grown throughout the decades with Agilent and we look forward to the future opportunities we will have to accelerate growth together.”
Collaboration between academia and industry
Meanwhile, Agilent has named the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) as a Center of Excellence.
The firm will support the university by equipping a new Agilent-sponsored Teaching and Research Center for Separation (TRC).
It will feature gas and liquid chromatography systems and mass spectrometry instruments and be used to demonstrate the company’s workflow capabilities.
Stefan Schuette, Agilent VP and general manager, Liquid Phase Separation Division, said: “We anticipate that the broad sharing of knowledge and expertise will help shorten the timeline between new scientific discoveries and practical applications.”
The university is the fifth to join a network of Centers of Excellence coordinated by Agilent.
Professor Oliver Schmitz of UDE said demands on modern analytical chemistry are growing and require more profound knowledge in separation and detection techniques.
“They are highly relevant for industrial practice, for example in product control, so there is a desire for more appropriately trained technical staff,” said the manager of the TRC.