Business Express: Analytical Technologies Group Brings New Growth to Eastern CT
Groton-based Analytical Technologies Group, LLC, an independent lab instrument service provider that does business with corporate giants and emerging biotech companies, was recently acquired by Brandon Kuchta and Michael Kuchta.
The brothers who hail from Long Island, NY honed in on Analytical Technologies last year after searching for opportunities to buy an existing profitable company with high growth potential.
With 20 employees, ATG has been in business for 11 years. The company services high-tech equipment used in the pharmaceutical industry. One specialty is providing maintenance and repair service to equipment that purifies proteins that will eventually be used to manufacture drugs for human consumption. Michael Kuchta, President of ATG, sat down with Business Express to talk about the company:
Q: Please describe the services provided by ATG, and the clients you serve.
A: ATG provides repair, maintenance, and contract services for laboratory research instruments. We specialize in the full suite of General Electric AKTA™ FPLC systems, Molecular Devices plate readers, BioTek plate washers, ChromaCon Contichrom® CUBE series instruments, LEWA Bioprocess Technologies systems, and other niche laboratory equipment lines. We also buy, refurbish, and resell used lab equipment. Our customer base ranges from large multinational pharmaceutical companies and cutting-edge biotech firms to preeminent research Universities and U.S. government research institutions.
Q: How did you identify the opportunity to acquire this company?
A: When seeking out investment opportunities, we set certain criteria for an ideal target: 100% of the business is for sale; a reasonably broad customer base with some degree of recurring revenue; and located in the mid-Atlantic or Northeast U.S., among other characteristics. We specifically targeted business-to-business services companies and came across ATG while reviewing vendor lists of public Universities. We then sent an email to the former owner and founder of the company asking whether they had considered selling the business. The timing was right!
Q: What are the unique characteristics of ATG among others in the industry?
A: At its core, ATG is a service business that focuses exclusively on niche equipment systems used in protein purification and analysis, which is widely performed in pharmaceutical research and development and drug manufacturing processes. These systems are absolutely mission-critical to the pharmaceutical/biotech R&D process – downtime is not an option. Since we specialize in particular equipment lines from particular manufacturers, we’ve really carved out a unique niche as a leader in the third-party service provider space. In addition, ATG’s 11-year history has afforded us the opportunity to methodically R&D the set of instruments under our purview such that our field service engineers have become truly world class. Our engineers diagnose system issues down to the mechanical and electrical component level, which extends the useful life of expensive equipment and saves our customers time and money. As a result, our incentives are more closely aligned with our customers than the manufacturers’.
Q: Please describe your business development strategy. What are you doing to expand your business?
A: Currently we’re focused on more fully penetrating existing customers. To achieve this, we’re working to enhance our marketing, branding and customer communication strategy to leverage our existing relationships and position us for further growth.
Q: What does being in eastern Connecticut mean for your business? How is being “here” beneficial?
A: Eastern Connecticut is a great location for us given the volume of work we do in the Boston and greater Massachusetts area – i.e. the east coast’s pharmaceutical and biotech hub. We also have many customers in the NY metropolitan area, so we’re conveniently situated between these two pivotal regions. That said, our field service engineers do travel throughout all of North America on service jobs and being close to transportation centers is important.
Q: Please share your plans for future growth of ATG.
A: We believe that organic growth opportunities abound for ATG due to the extraordinary people in our organization – from field service engineers to sales and customer service representatives, depot engineers and all of our support staff. The range of our customer base is truly impressive, and the industry itself is booming, with downstream pharmaceutical equipment service and equipment sales being big growth opportunities.
For more information on ATG, please give us a call at 1-860-449-0886, visit our website at www.atgservice.com, or email us at customerservice@atgservice.com.
