Alfa Aesar — BrandWiki

Alfa Aesar

Overview

Alfa Aesar

defunct	2021
fate	Acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific and products rebranded to Thermo Scientific
location	Ward Hill, Massachusetts, U.S.
industry	Basic materials
products	Specialty chemicals
owner	Thermo Fisher Scientific‡R1R‡
homepage	http://www.alfa.com

Alfa Aesar was a supplier of reagents and materials for use in research and development, and analysis. The company had facilities in a variety of countries and manufactured many of the chemicals they sold. The company was bought by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2015,[2] having previously existed as part of the Johnson Matthey Fine Chemicals & Catalysts Division.[3] In 2021, Alfa Aesar products were rebranded under the Thermo Scientific brand name.[4][5]

History

Alfa Aesar was formed from a series of company mergers:

Both Lancaster Synthesis and Avocado had close trading links to Alfa at various times prior to the takeover: the organic products sold in Germany through the Alfa-Ventron catalogue were sourced from Lancaster, while Avocado products were distributed both in the US and Germany by the combined Alfa-Aesar.

Lancaster Synthesis, initially based in Lancaster and then Morecambe, Lancashire UK. This business was founded by Eric Wildsmith and Wilf Maughan and specialised in the manufacture and supply of organic research chemicals. The business was sold to MTM PLC for £20,000,000 in 1989,[9] following which Maughan retired and Wildsmith was eventually ousted as managing director by the Executive Chairman of MTM : Richard Lines.[10] MTM subsequently went bankrupt, Lines and the MTM Financial Director, Tom Baxter were jailed for fraud,[11] and Lancaster Synthesis (by then rebranded MTM Research Chemicals) was sold to BTP PLC in 1993 - who reverted the name to Lancaster Synthesis. BTP in turn was later sold to Clariant, who had no idea what to do with a catalogue company - and eventually agreed a sale to Johnson Matthey for £14,000,000.[12][13] Unfortunately a few weeks before the sale was due to complete, an unexplained major fire destroyed the scale-up plant and the majority of the bulk stock.[14][15] This has echoes of another destructive fire on the eve of the MTM takeover, which totally destroyed a manufacturing laboratory. The purchase price was subsequently revised to £2,000,000 following further negotiations after the fire,[12] and the purchase was completed in October 2004.[16] The Lancaster Synthesis sites have now all closed, with all UK operations moved to the newer Avocado facilities at Heysham. During the period of MTM ownership, a series of other companies were acquired and brought under notional control: Loba Feinchemie (Fischamend, Austria), Farchan Laboratories (Gainesville, Florida) Monomer Polymer & Dajac Labs (USA). These were all sold back to their previous owners or local management following the MTM collapse as they required too high a management input from the UK, and had never been properly integrated. Not long after Farchan was returned to local management it also was destroyed in a fire, subsequently relocating to Columbus, OH close to the location of its founding, where its initial technology had been based on research into high performance aviation fuels during WWII by Henry Channon. During the period of MTM ownership a short-lived distribution agreement existed for Farmitalia-Carlo Erba to distribute Lancaster Synthesis products through a Carlo Erba rebranded version of the LS catalogue. However this venture was a failure and only lasted for one catalogue edition: the Italians proved unable to commit the required marketing resources to the project.

Alfa Aesar

History

Manufacturing

Product lines

External links

References