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24 Worcester Business Journal • www.wbjournal.com 25 YEARS: IMPACTFUL COMPANIES Happy Anniversary! Worcester Business Journal Congratulations on 25 Years of Business in Central Massachusetts. Best wishes from Happy Anniversary! 28 Franklin Street • Worcester, MA 01608 508-890-9000 | 800-244-8161 | www.baystatesavingsbank.com F or more than 40 years, Waters has been at the heart of the Milford economy. The $2-billion global compa- ny now employs about 5,000 people in 27 countries, many of them in Milford. The publicly traded, profitable Waters operates two divisions: Waters Division, based in Milford, and TA Instruments, based in Delaware. The company is one of the largest in the analytical-instruments industry, supporting scientists working in 100,000 laboratories around the world. Its earnings per share grew 2 percent to $5.04 in 2013, from $4.93 in 2012. Waters develops analytical-science technologies, including liquid chroma- tography, mass spectrometry, rheometry and microcalorimetry. These markets account for about $5 billion of the esti- mated $20 billion to $25 billion world- wide analytical-instrumentation market. In 1990, Waters was part of Millipore, with which it had merged 10 years ear- lier. In 1993, at a time when national health-care reform was on the horizon and many capital spending plans were put on hold, Millipore put the Waters Chromatography Division up for sale. The following year, an investor group led by Waters management bought the divi- sion's assets for $360 million. Under the leadership of chairman, president and CEO Douglas Berthiaume (who announced last year that he will retire by the summer of 2015), the com- pany renewed its focus and regained its entrepreneurial spirit, ushering in a new era of record growth in sales and profits. Encouraged by increasing sales and profits, the health of the economy and the strength of the financial markets, Waters' management team took the company public in 1995. The following year, it purchased TA Instruments to further strengthen its position in the chemical industry. In the years since, Waters has made several key acquisi- tions to continue bolstering its global foothold. T hanks mostly to Gordon Lankton, Nypro is a profitable $1.2-billion business with global operations. Before it was acquired in July 2013 by Florida- based Jabil Circuit for $665 million, Nypro ran an employee-stock-owner- ship plan (ESOP), one of the few that allowed non-American workers. Nypro, founded in 1955, has long- standing relationships with big custom- ers, and a global presence. So, as we wondered in 2013, why would it want to be acquired? Simply put, as we noted then, Nypro needed both an infusion of capital that's been hard to get under an ESOP structure, and new capabilities that it didn't have but that customers wanted. Just as importantly, Nypro — with its sizeable human and robot work- force — has been a major economic catalyst in efforts to revive Clinton, a once-prominent mill town during America's booming smokestack-indus- try era. Challenges facing Nypro in recent years have not been so much about its precision plastics-molding capabilities as they have been about recent consoli- dation among competitors in consumer Waters Corp. Nypro 12 Douglas Berthiaume leads Waters Corp., which has navigated the laboratory device industry for decades. 10 11 12