Astorg, a pan-European private equity firm specialised in healthcare and life sciences, has announced the closing of the acquisition of Thermo Fisher Scientific‘s microbiology business. The entity becomes a standalone company, led by Dirk Bontridder as CEO, and will operate under a new brand from the end of 2026.
Analysis by the experts at Auris Finance, advisors in mergers, acquisitions and financial engineering.
The deal, announced in late April 2026 and closed in August, is valued at around 1.075 billion dollars, made up of a cash component and a 50 million dollar vendor loan. The business being sold, which sat within Thermo Fisher’s Specialty Diagnostics segment, generated 645 million dollars of revenue in 2025.
A global microbiology diagnostics platform
The acquired business supplies consumables and diagnostic equipment used in microbiology testing for clinical, food and pharmaceutical markets, including antimicrobial susceptibility testing and culture media solutions, marketed under the Remel and Oxoid brands. It serves more than 15,000 clients in around a hundred countries and employs approximately 2,400 people across 13 production and R&D sites worldwide.
For Thermo Fisher, the sale is part of an active portfolio management approach, with the group redeploying the freed-up capital towards priorities seen as more value-accretive for its shareholders. For Astorg, on the other hand, the deal is an investment thesis in its own right: turning a business that until now had been embedded within a large industrial group into an independent platform, which can now benefit from fully dedicated strategic and operational management.
A carve-out model driven by dedicated governance
Astorg has appointed Dirk Bontridder as CEO of the new entity. He previously led PerkinElmer, where he oversaw the group’s transformation into a global specialist provider of analytical and laboratory solutions, having previously served as CEO of the Reynaers group and executive vice-president in charge of BioPharma Services and Clinical Diagnostics at Eurofins Scientific. His track record, focused on driving industrial transformations in life sciences and diagnostics, matches the very challenge of this deal: to build a standalone brand and organisation out of an asset that was historically integrated, with no disruption for a recurring international client base.
The investment fits into Astorg’s healthcare strategy, which has already built a life sciences portfolio including CordenPharma, Clario and Echosens. The deal illustrates the fund’s ability to structure complex carve-out transactions, where value creation rests as much on sector expertise as on the ability to build a viable independent organisation out of a business previously run as one division among others.
A deal that reveals the dynamics of the diagnostics market
The acquisition confirms private equity’s sustained appetite for diagnostics businesses with strong recurring revenue, driven by structural needs in public health safety, pharmaceutical quality control and food safety. The consumables-based business model, less exposed to investment cycles than equipment, is a key attraction for this type of asset, as is the diversification of end markets across clinical, pharmaceutical and food segments, which limits exposure to a single sector.
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