Skids and resins: Pall divulges more on Sartorius divestment

In a letter to customers, Pall Corporation has revealed the exact businesses and products it is selling to Sartorius to facilitate Danaher’s acquisition of GE Biopharma.

Last week, Danaher Corporation announced plans to divest parts of its bioprocessing businesses to help facilitate the $21.4 billion (€19.2 billion) takeover of GE Healthcare’s Life Sciences business.

The firm said rival bioprocess vendor Sartorius is in line to pick up its biomolecular characterization business FortéBio, its SoloHill microcarrier technology unit, and various chromatography hardware and resins in a $750 million deal. However, Danaher did not explicitly say how Pall Corporation, which it acquired in 2015 for $13.8 billion, would be affected.

Image: iStock/Casimiro

But in an email to its customers sent Friday, Jennifer Honeycutt – president at Pall and group executive at Danaher – gave specific product details involved in the divestment and said that “these businesses will thrive under Sartorius’s ownership.”

The businesses being sold are:

Sartorius has also made an offer for Pall’s chromatography resins business, Honeycutt said, though this can only be accepted after Pall has completed consultation with the French Works Council.

The transaction is dependent on the Danaher-GE deal going through, now expected in the first quarter 2020.

Until this point, “all existing processes and contracts remain unchanged,” said Honeycutt. “. We will maintain our focus on supporting and servicing your business; and upon closing the deal, we expect a seamless integration that should remain mostly invisible to you.”