Bruker To Exit Ailing Instrument Businesses

Because of “significant losses” over the past four years, scientific instrument maker Bruker Corp. plans to stop selling some instrument lines and intends to divest others, including its inductively coupled plasma/mass spectrometry (ICP/MS) business. The instruments are used in food, energy, and environmental testing.

Most of the businesses formerly belonged to instrument maker Varian. Agilent Technologies sold them to Bruker for $38 million in 2010 following its acquisition of Varian. To satisfy antitrust authorities, Agilent had agreed to divest overlapping product lines with less than $100 million in annual sales.

In a letter to customers posted on its website, Bruker says it will immediately stop selling stand-alone gas chromatography systems and GC/single-quadrupole MS systems. The firm also says it is seeking a buyer for its ICP/MS business and for its GC service business.

Bruker says it expects to complete the sale of the service business to a “major analytical systems company” before the end of the year. The ICP/MS business is likely to go to “a global, high-quality analytical instruments company with a broader trace elemental analysis portfolio in the next few months.”

Chromatography businesses unaffected by Bruker’s actions are the firm’s EVOQ liquid chromatography/MS and its Scion GC/triple quadrupole MS product lines.

Bruker executives didn’t respond to requests for comment about the planned sale, but the firm had previously hinted that the businesses, housed within its Chemical & Applied Markets division, were in trouble. In 2012, it took a $17.8 million charge against earnings because of “deterioration” in the division’s financial performance.” The company is now seeking to sell the troubled businesses because “there was no way to reach acceptable financial performance” in the foreseeable future, it says in the customer letter.

Until four years ago, Bruker had little experience in the GC market, according to Stefan Fritsch, editor of Instrument News, making him wonder how successful they could be in it. “They sailed into uncharted water, and they sunk,” he says.