Sartorius plans $500m+ CAPEX and eyes M&A opportunities in 2023

Sartorius invested €593 ($647) million in its global capacities in 2022 and says it is planning similar this year.

For the full year 2022, Sartorius reported total sales of €4.17 billion, representing a 21% increase on the previous year. The firm’s Bioprocess Solutions business pulled in €3.32 billion of this and saw a 22% growth year-on-year.

The firm reiterated how the skew of COVID-19 related revenues and demand normalization will drive down sales going forward, with CEO Joachim Kreuzburg forecasting low single-digit growth in 2023.

However, the company is – and will be – buoyed by its capital expenditure programs and M&A activity, he told investors.

“We invested a bit more than €0.5 billion [€593 million] during 2022,” he said on a conference call, highlighting the CAPEX ratio of 12.5%. “We are planning the same level for the year 2023. This is very much a global exercise.”

Some of the projects he highlighted included a 130,000 square-foot plant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the addition of cell culture media capabilities at its Yauco, Puerto Rico site, and a €270 million investment in a site in Songdo, South Korea.

“We are very satisfied with the fact that we are growing pretty much across all product portfolios, and therefore, we are very much taking care of making sure we remain having a high delivery ability across our portfolio to the benefit of our customers. That means we are indeed expanding our capacities in – and let me start with – bioprocessing and separation technologies.”

This includes filtration, purification, and fluid management systems, along with cell culture media capacities – reagents, cell culture media etc – and bioanalytical tools and services.

Kreuzburg also noted the M&A effect, which added two percentage points to its Bioprocess Solutions group growth. In 2022, the firm spent roughly €536 million on bolt-on acquisitions, adding Automated Lab Solutions (ALS) in January, completing the acquisition of Novasep assets in February, and buying Albumedix in August.

In total, Sartorius has added 10 businesses since 2020, he continued, and while he could not comment on M&A plans for 2023, he did say “we continue to be interested in adjacent additions to our portfolio, complementary additions.

“We believe that there are a number of highly interesting companies out there, maybe some won’t be for sale, maybe some others might be open. What one can say is, it’s also a very competitive landscape out there. So one thing is what we find interesting, the other thing is what might be then achievable and executable.”