May 11, 2001

Sapphire, Upchurch Merge Under Scivex

Sapphire Engineering, Inc. of Pocasset, MA, joined forces May 1 with Upchurch Scientific of Oak Harbor, WA under the banner of Scivex, their newly designated parent company.

In business since 1900, SEI is a leading manufacturer of precision component parts from very hard materials, such as synthetic sapphire and zirconia ceramics. These materials have historically been used in the analytical and HPLC instrument markets as wetted component parts in liquid handling and detection systems.

SEI serves a global market with its sapphire pistons and ruby ball seat check valves. Over the last 10 years the company has offered increasingly complex turnkey, sub-assemblies to OEMs, ranging from complete pump heads, check valves, and flow-cell assemblies. Last year SEI introduced a line of low-pressure positive displacement and dispense pumps for the instrument market. Other market activities include precision micro ball lenses and assemblies for fiber optics and technical sapphire components for industrial applications.

Upchurch Scientific is a leading manufacturer of close-tolerance fluid transfer fittings, tubing and accessories, specializing in precision injection molding, machining and extrusion of high-end engineering thermoplastics. Markets Upchurch serves include analytical instrumentation, medical devices and diagnostics OEMs and end users.

“Each company will continue to operate independently with existing management, and will keep their existing name” said Alan Schell, CEO of Scivex and Upchurch Scientific. “However we are beginning to explore the possibility of combined product development because of the liquid transfer engineering problems we can jointly solve. That's why this merger made sense.”

Sapphire Engineering President and CEO Keith D. Besse agreed and added his thoughts on changes in the analytical instrument market that helped bring the two companies together.

“In the early 80s, everyone produced and sold components to OEM's who built up their assemblies in house,” said Besse. “But in the last 10 years there has been concentrated effort by OEMs to outsource many of these activities. Consequently, both our organizations have followed specialty components upstream at the OEM level and began offering customers subassembly and turnkey services.

“Today, we purchase many Upchurch parts to connect and finish our subassemblies,” Besse continued. “But surprisingly there is very little competing overlap in products by our two companies. We can concentrate on taking advantage of each other's strengths to better serve our customers and the markets instead of worrying about duplicate capacities.”

Scivex is a holding company of KRG Inc (Denver, CO), a private equity investment firm that invests in companies with a history of operating profitability and with strong growth prospects. Once KRG invests in such companies, they partner with existing management teams.


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