Avantor

Avantor is a chemicals and materials company headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania. The company ranked 484th on the 2020 Fortune 500, based on its 2019 sales.

History

In 1904, John Townsend Baker founded the chemical company J.T. Baker. The company was acquired by Procter & Gamble in 1985, and was subsequently sold to Mallinckrodt in 1995.

In 2010, investment firm New Mountain Capital purchased Mallinckrodt Baker Inc., which then changed its name to Avantor. The company expanded globally with the 2011 acquisitions of Indian laboratory reagents supplier RFCL and Polish lab supply firm POCH.

In 2016, Avantor merged with Nusil Technology. In 2017, Avantor acquired chemical blending business Puritan Products Inc. and laboratory supplies company VWR. The combined company operates under the Avantor name, with VWR and vwr.com remaining as a selling channel.

In May 2019, Avantor went public with a $3.8 billion initial public offering, which gave the company a market capitalization of $7.62 billion. This was the second biggest initial public offering of the year. That same year the company expanded further into Asia with the opening of an innovation center in Shanghai, which focuses on monoclonal antibodies and cell and gene therapy. In 2020, Avantor doubled the size of its Bridgewater, New Jersey innovation center, expanding its research and development capabilities and cell and gene therapy reagent manufacturing.

In June 2021, Avantor acquired China-based RIM Bio, a manufacturer of single-use bioprocess bags and assemblies for biopharmaceutical manufacturing applications. Through the acquisition, Avantor gained access to RIM’s Changzhou, China facility, marking Avantor’s first single-use production plant in the Africa, Middle East, Asia (AMEA) region. The deal is part of a larger expansion of the company’s single-use manufacturing footprint with plans to increase its presence by 30%.

On April 6 2021, Avantor was named "Best Bioprocessing Supplier in Single-Use Manufacturing" at the Asia-Pacific Bioprocessing Excellence Awards[11] and "Best Company in Bioprocessing Excellence for Single-use Solutions" and "Best Bioprocessing Supplier for Upstream Processing" at Biologics Manufacturing Korea.