Sigma-Aldrich Corporation  announced it has acquired all outstanding shares of Cerilliant Corporation of Round Rock, Texas to strengthen the company's analytical chemistry product portfolio and to continue to deliver on its strategic growth plans. Cerilliant, a leading supplier of high quality reference standards and materials, provides products that support the clinical diagnostics, environmental, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, forensic and clinical toxicology markets. Terms of the purchase were not disclosed. The Company expects this acquisition to be neutral to mildly accretive to earnings per share in 2011. Cerilliant has been a portfolio company of Argenta Partners of Dallas, Texas for the past 10 years.  

Cerilliant brings to Sigma-Aldrich over 2,800 products and more than 30 years of expertise in the design, development, synthesis, characterization and packaging of analytical standards, calibrators, controls and certified reference materials that are used in a wide range of analytical applications. The standards company is well known for its visionary approach to serving these growing industries with a continually expanding line of innovative new products and sustains a modern, robust quality system which incorporates cGMP, GLP and ISO requirements. Cerilliant is accredited to ISO Guide 34, ISO/IEC 17025 and is certified to ISO 9001:2008. Its extensive capabilities complement Sigma-Aldrich's existing Fluka and Supelco analytical brands and will expand the Company's analytical customer base and markets. Cerilliant employs 65 people at its state-of-the-art laboratory and manufacturing facility in Round Rock, Texas.

"Cerilliant's strong product suite and solid relationships with customers and analytical equipment suppliers will bring important new business opportunities to our company's analytical arena," commented Russel Gant, vice president of the Analytical Research business at Sigma-Aldrich. "Their experienced team and capabilities, combined with the quality and breadth of our current analytical brands, our broad scientific knowledge and our powerful global footprint will provide analytical customers around the globe with access to a broad and ever-increasing range of specialized, high-quality analytical standards from a convenient and reliable single source."

Sherri Pogue, president of Cerilliant and newly appointed director of the Round Rock site, added, "Being part of the Sigma-Aldrich family will provide Cerilliant with the depth and breadth of resources that will allow us to continue to expand our development and offering of innovative products to support our customers' ever-evolving analytical requirements. We remain committed to providing our customers with unsurpassed quality and service."

Sigma-Aldrich is a leading Life Science and High Technology company committed to Enabling Science to Improve the Quality of Life. Its chemical and biochemical products and kits are used in scientific research, including genomic and proteomic research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development and as key components in pharmaceutical, diagnostic and other high technology manufacturing.