Sartorius Stedim Biotech, a leading international partner of the biopharmaceutical industry headquartered in Germany, has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the chromatography process equipment division of Novasep.

The parties agreed not to disclose the purchase price until the necessary regulatory approvals have been obtained. Novasep's division expects to generate sales revenue of approximately 37 million euros in 2020 at double-digit profit margins and employs approximately 100 people, the majority of whom work at its Pompey site in northern France and some in the USA, China and India.

The proposed transaction is subject to antitrust approvals and the information and consultation of Novasep's works council and is expected to close during the first half of 2021.

Novasep's chromatography unit comprises resin-based batch and intensified chromatography systems, and primarily focuses on high-pressure, multi-use applications for smaller molecules, such as oligonucleotides, peptides and insulin.

Since 2018, Novasep and Sartorius Stedim Biotech have been collaborating in the joint development of an optimized system for a membrane-based, low-pressure chromatography that processes larger molecules more productively and will be launched soon.