NEWARK – B&W Tek, a small scientific instrument manufacturer, has left its original Delaware headquarters for a new facility in New Jersey under its parent company.
The company that was located in the Delaware Industrial Park off Route 72 is a multifaceted operation with expertise in photonic laser, spectrometer, and chemometric technologies producing spectroscopy and laser instrumentation. Among its products is the handheld Tactic ID-N, which police officers can use to quickly identify an unidentified narcotic.
The company was founded by entrepreneur Sean Wang, a Chinese immigrant who came to the United States in 1985 to enter a doctoral program in electrical engineering at the University of Delaware. The firm focuses on smaller, easy-to-use instruments rather than large, expensive, institutional-grade equipment. In doing so, it grew to annual sales of more than $10 million, serving clients like Pfizer, Eli Lilly, L’Oréal, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Department of Defense with more than 125 employees around the world.
Components are manufactured in China, while designers and engineers worked in Newark to assemble and test the company’s products. Meanwhile, sales offices dotted the globe in Asia, Europe and the U.S.
Now led by CEO Jack Zhou, B&W Tek has continued to grow its sales, surpassing 10,000 spectrometers sold.
In 2018, B&W Tek was acquired by Swiss precision instrument maker Metrohm AG, which was looking to expand into the spectroscopy market. That same year, Metrohm opened a new, state-of-the-art American operations headquarters facility in Tampa.
On Nov. 19, Metrohm opened its latest U.S. investment: a 45,000-square-foot facility in Plainsboro, N.J., near Trenton that brings B&W Tek, Innovative Photonic Solutions (IPS) and a new Metrohm applications lab and field office under one roof. The space, which had formerly been IPS’ headquarters, offers laboratory space for live demonstrations of instrumentation and hands-on instrument training for up to 70 customers.
IPS and B&W Tek will have independent manufacturing, sales, application, and service support infrastructures in the building.
“Housing the companies under one roof brings our complementary technologies together. We will be able to leverage a suite of products for [original equipment manufacturer] solutions,” Zhou said in a statement.
The new facility led to the closure of the Delaware plant off Shea Way and the move of a number of Delaware-based employees to the neighboring Garden State. Metrohm, which didn’t respond to a Delaware Business Times inquiry about whether it considered growing in Delaware and how many employees would be affected, touted the new location in its announcement as being “in the heart of the U.S. pharmaceutical market.”
“The Northeast has a large number of our customers in close proximity, and we are excited that these customers now have a place to see our instruments, learn about our solutions and experience what Metrohm has to offer firsthand,” said Ed Colihan, president and CEO of Metrohm USA, in a statement.
