Ortho leaving BBing?

[Mabel Adams]

I heard a rumor that Ortho is thinking of getting out of the blood banking reagent business. Has anyone else heard such a thing?

[Deny Morlino]

A vague rumor I think I heard too. Seems like they are spinning off pieces of BB at least (i.e. Rhogam).

[tbostock]

They have also re-assigned their BB specialists to be generalists, covering mostly Chemistry products. So that's a little suspicious.

[marvy1]

I did hear the Johnson and Johnson is considering selling Ortho

[Dansket]

I did hear the Johnson and Johnson is considering selling Ortho

So did I!

[MAGNUM]

Maybe that is why I have not seen my quote Ortho Rep. Also, maybe that is a good reason why I did not get any flack for installing a Echo instead of a Provue.

[goodchild]

I know in our area they consolidated the reps. We used to see our previous rep almost once a month and she was very involved with reagent problems, etc. Since the change a few months back we haven't seen the new guy once.

[tricore]

I have seen it in print several times that J&J is looking to sell off the BB and manybe all of the diagnostices. They already sold the RHOGAM to Kedrion.

[Kashmira patel]

It is in consideration. See the links

http://www.radmailer.com/t/ViewEmail/r/10AD2E2E2C3715EB/9D9C8F97231376DCC9C291422E3DE149

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-22/j-j-s-forecast-misses-analyst-estimates.html

[aafrin]

Yes, they have sold off RHOGAm and are in the process of selling Ortho Diagnostic Division.

Edited March 12, 2013 by aafrin
spelling mistake

[Pony]

This has been an ongoing project for J&J since the late 80's. They have never found a buyer that could meet their price. Price is the bottom line for all J&J afiliates and the Diagnostics Division has never met the required profit margin. Blood Bank is a mature market where many of the customers buy on price rather than quality. Still no matter what happens I do not believe the product line will just drop off the market. The other small companies out there may see this as an opportunity to get a bigger foothold in the market. Immucor has bought anyone else of consequence so I can't see them buying the Ortho line. Let's hope wherever the company does end up it is with an investor that will but some money into R&D. We need to keep competion in the market healthy so that we can keep providing better, faster care for our patients.

[Mabel Adams]

I think Immucor is committed to a future in molecular so won't want to buy Ortho. Also, they were bought awhile back by an investment company that does turn-arounds I think so they may not be in a position to buy it. I would like Bio-Rad to buy Ortho and market the machine Ortho is planning instead of their older automated platform--but then I guess we would be back to no competition on gel reagents.