BD completes sale of discovery labware division

BD has announced the completion of the previously-announced sale of its BD Biosciences discovery labware division to Corning.

The deal was agreed in April 2012 and is valued at around $730 million (457.17 million pounds), with BD's advanced bioprocessing platform being excluded from the transaction.

BD expects to record a gain within discontinued operations in the first quarter of the 2013 fiscal year, while also helping the company to target its business objectives more strategically.

Commenting on the agreement earlier this year, BD's executive vice-president William Kozy said: "This sale will enable our BD Biosciences segment to focus resources and management attention on both our recent biosciences acquisitions and our recently launched new instrumentation products, which are essential to our accelerated growth efforts."

Since the beginning of the year, the firm has purchased a number of life science businesses, including Kiestra Lab Automation, Sirigen Group and Safety Syringes.

It also announced a new collaboration with Lab21 last month, which will focus on the development of new oncology assays for the BD Max platform.