Bruker to acquire Alicona Imaging GmbH

Billerica, Massachusetts – Bruker Corp. officials announced the signing of an agreement to purchase 100% of the shares of Alicona Imaging GmbH, a leading provider of optical-based metrology products based in Graz, Austria. Alicona's optical 3D metrology products are a perfect complement to Bruker's microCT, stylus profiler, white-light interferometry and atomic force microscope (AFM) product suite. The combined product offering broadens Bruker's application reach and offers customers an even more comprehensive selection of complementary metrology solutions to serve their materials research, engineering and high-precision quality assurance needs. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

"We are excited to add Alicona's unique technologies and strong brand to our set of metrology systems," says Bruker NANO Group President Dr. Mark R. Munch. "Alicona has led the industry in the development of focus variation technology and has delivered high-quality metrology products and manufacturing QA/QC solutions to the market that align nicely with our own products and our strengths in industrial metrology."

"We are very pleased to join Bruker," adds Dr. Stefan Scherer, co-CEO of Alicona. "We have built a strong company that delivers superior measurement solutions in laboratory and production environments, and we are looking forward to leveraging Bruker's global reach to serve an even wider customer base and help expand the Bruker portfolio to a wider set of manufacturing solutions."

"We have focused for 17 years on building the highest quality products and best-matched solutions to our customers' metrology problems," explains Dr. Manfred Prantl, co-CEO of Alicona. "The Alicona InfiniteFocus, µCMM, and collaborative robot products are leading examples of this innovative history that combine nicely into Bruker's growing family of application-enabling technologies."

"Over the last years Alicona has shown an impressive top-line growth and international expansion based on its leading technology," notes Philipp Jacobi, managing partner of Quadriga Capital Eigenkapitalberatung GmbH. "We are glad to have supported Alicona and its management team in such an important growth phase. Over the last 3 years Alicona's staff has almost doubled to over 150 employees and its product portfolio has significantly expanded. With Bruker, Alicona gains a strong industrial research and metrology partner and at the same time a new home, from where the company can continue its international growth plans."