Millipore (NYSE: MIL) is a Life Science leader providing cutting-edge technologies, tools, and services for bioscience research and biopharmaceutical manufacturing. As a strategic partner, we collaborate with customers to confront the world’s challenging human health issues. From research to development to production, our scientific expertise and innovative solutions help customers tackle their most complex problems and achieve their goals. Millipore Corporation is an S&P 500 company with more than 6,100 employees in 47 countries worldwide.
In 1954, a recent college graduate named Jack Bush started a membrane company that over the next 50 years would grow from a handful of employees to a multi-national bioscience corporation with more than 5,800 employees and annual sales of .3 billion. Over the years, this small company that pioneered the use of membrane technology in hundreds of diverse applications grew not only in size and sales but also in scientific capability. Through substantial R&D investments, strategic acquisitions and international expansions, Bush’s company broadened its technology and market base to become a leader in the life science industry serving biotechnology firms, pharmaceutical companies and laboratories around the world.
In the early 1950s Bush was working for the Lovell Chemical Company, a small (20 person) privately owned business just outside of Boston. One day, Lovell’s owner was approached by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and asked to bid on a contract to develop and manufacture membrane-based filtering devices and systems used to separate the molecular components of fluid samples.
Beating out such giants as Eastman Kodak and DuPont for the government contract, this little company set to work successfully developing membranes first used in Germany after World War II, when saturation bombing resulted in widespread water contamination.
When the membranes were declassified in 1953 and offered for commercial use, Bush bought Lovell Chemical’s right to the technology for 0,000. Other companies declined to bid for the rights to this membrane technology. They believed that there was no commercial future for the membrane filter. As a result, Bush established what he called the Millipore Filter Company, named for a sponge that lives by osmosis in the Adriatic Sea. The name was later changed to Millipore Corporation to reflect its wide range of products for fluid analysis and purification.
In its early years, Millipore made some major contributions to water microbiology methods that have become part of the standard of the US Public Health Service. “The membrane technology was revolutionary in terms of giving researchers and scientists the basic tools they needed,” Bush told an interviewer in the late 1990s. “We were on the cutting edge.” Separation technologies and products were needed not only by researchers, but also by medical schools, hospitals and dialysis centers, and many industries – including the pharmaceutical, chemical, plastics, food and beverage, and microelectronics industries.
Soon after starting the company, Bush aggressively pursued new markets by establishing distributorships around the world. This was a very risky move: “I guess we believed in the bold stroke,” he reflected several years before his retirement in 1992. “We could have conserved our resources, but we decided to go hell-bent in all directions. And happily, we were lucky!” Canada was the first in 1959 and by 1961 there were distributors and sub-agents in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, England, Australia, the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland. The distributorships were so successful that Bush established subsidiaries in seven countries by the end of the decade.
The company continued to expand, opening manufacturing plants in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, Molsheim France and Cork Ireland to meet the growing demand for its worldwide products.
In 2004, the company celebrated its 50th anniversary. The company continues to grow and has acquired several companies during the past few years, including NovaSeptic AB, Microsafe B.V., and Newport Biosystems.
In 2006, Millipore Corporation acquired Serologicals Corporation, a Georgia-based corporation doing business as the companies Chemicon, Upstate, Linco and Celliance. These companies provide products and services to researchers at major life science companies and leading research institutions involved in: neurology, oncology, hematology, immunology, cardiology, infectious diseases, cell signaling and stem cell research.
By integrating Serologicals’ products and services into our capabilities, Millipore has become the only company in the Life Science industry that offers both upstream cell culture and downstream separation offerings for biopharmaceutical production. The acquisition also gave Millipore leading positions in a broad range of high growth segments such as drug discovery products and services, antibodies, cell biology reagents, and stem cell research. Formerly, Serologicals products were not widely available in international markets, so Millipore’s significant presence in Europe, Asia and Japan will lead to increased sales of these products. Our customers’ research will benefit because Millipore is now able to optimize workflows from sample preparation, to developing and performing assays, to analyzing results.
With offices in more than 47 countries worldwide and more than 6,000 employees, the company is committed to helping solve the world’s challenging human health issues. Today, Millipore is a leader in the life science industry, providing scientific expertise and a full-range of products and services from concept to production.
