Brooks and Entegris find fresh fields in life sciences
06/01/2003
By CHRIS ANDERSON
CHELMSFORD, MASS.—While many companies that service wafer fabs around the world swoon in concert with chip manufacturers, companies such as Brooks Automation, based here, and Entegris (Chaska, Minn.) have found success in the life sciences and other markets by leveraging technologies developed for the semiconductor market.
But the companies stress that this branching out is not intended merely as a way to smooth out the revenue bumps associated with participating in a cyclical business. "I'd say that the driver for [diversification] is to get more return out of what we are investing in already," says Edward Grady, president and COO of Brooks Automation. "It expands our market potential for a product. If we have developed a robotics system and I sell it to not just the semiconductor industry but to others, we can make much more money on the same amount of invested dollars."
 Brooks Automation's Parallab can process 96 reactions in parallel using nanoliters of reagents per reaction, and can increase the volume and speed of testing. |
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That view is shared by Todd Edlund, vice president of marketing/semiconductor for Entegris. "We see an opportunity not just in life sciences, but in other areas to provide the same kind of chemical and materials integrity that we have to the semiconductor industry, and we will actively pursue opportunities in areas where we see there is this need," he says. "But clearly, we see this more as a growth strategy than a [revenue] smoothing strategy."
In the life sciences arena in particular, both Brooks and Entegris have been selling products for a number of years. In the past year, however, both companies have made it a more solid focus of their business—through developing products aimed directly at the life sciences market, and through acquisitions.
For Brooks, its Intelligent Automation Systems acquisition (completed in February 2002) has provided it with precision automation equipment that is behind the recent release of its Parallab product. Parallab can process 96 reactions in parallel using nanoliters of reagents per reaction, and can greatly increase the volume and speed of testing—particularly DNA testing.
Though Edlund says Entegris has sold its products to the life sciences industry since the late 1990s, it is only within the past year that the company split out life sciences as a separate business unit. Its Cynergy line of polymer tubes and valves springs directly from similar products sold to the semiconductor industry where trace quantities of metals in liquids used in manufacturing can have serious yield implications.
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To further bolster its presence in life sciences, Entegris acquired Electro Specialties Co. (ESC) in January. Through ESC, Entegris gained access to ECS' life sciences-laden client list, and its clean-in-place (CIP) modules it sells to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.
Both Grady and Edlund point out that while their companies are active in the life sciences industries and see them as ripe for future growth, they are not the only markets where they are leveraging existing technologies. Further, the branching out can provide benefits and product improvements that can be applied to their core business in semiconductors.
"(There are) learning cycles that we can get out of having an interaction with people doing DNA testing," says Grady. "They may say they need a certain level of precision, and when we develop that product, it will have backward compatibility in data storage or some other segment."