Madison company acquires assets of Highsmith; San Diego company acquires subsidiary of Wisconsin blood bank
Madison company acquires assets of Highsmith
Demco Inc. of Madison has acquired the assets of Highsmith, an award-winning educational products and library supplier, from Chicago-based W.W. Grainger Inc. a broad-line supplier of maintenance, repair and operating products serving business and institutions.
The acquisition of Highsmith, which includes the Upstart and Edupress brands, broadens the Demco product line, creating a richer offering of products and services to better serve the needs of librarians and K-12 educators nationwide.
Demco president Mike Grasee said, "Demco and Highsmith have a shared commitment to serving the library community: school, public, and academic. For more than 100 years, Demco has provided quality solutions for libraries. Together, we will continue that tradition into the future."
The Highsmith business will operate from the Demco facilities in Madison and Deforest, Wis. Demco employs 245 people and anticipates hiring an additional 60 to 75 people to support the acquisition of the Highsmith business; the vast majority of whom will come from Highsmith.
Demco is a subsidiary of Wall Family Enterprise, a family-owned business including five other library and education-focused companies based in the United States and United Kingdom.
Chicago-based W.W. Grainger, Inc. with 2009 sales of $6.2 billion is North America’s leading broad-line supplier of maintenance, repair and operating products with an expanding presence in Asia and Latin America.
San Diego company acquires subsidiary of Wisconsin blood bank
Gen-Probe Inc. has acquired GTI Diagnostics, a privately held specialty diagnostics company focused on the transplantation, blood bank and specialty coagulation markets, for $53 million in cash.
Gen-Probe acquired GTI from the Riverside Company, a global private equity firm, and from individual investors who include the company’s founders and management.
GTI Diagnostics was incorporated in Wisconsin in May 1985 as the for-profit subsidiary of the Blood Research Institute (BRI). BRI is part of the BloodCenter of Wisconsin, a community-based blood bank located in Milwaukee. In July of 2008, the BRI sold its interest in GTI to the Riverside Company, but BRI and GTI maintain a research and licensing collaboration today.
GTI, which employs approximately 100 people, maintains state-of-the-art manufacturing and research and development facilities in Waukesha.
"Acquiring GTI enables us to broaden and strengthen our transplant diagnostics business," said Carl Hull, president and chief executive officer of San diego-based Gen-Probe. "In addition, the acquisition gives us access to growing coagulation and transfusion-related blood bank products that we can sell to our current customer base."
