A while back, I noted the news that Agilent was going to stop manufacturing Varian NMRs. Marc Reisch and Jyllian Kemsley's article in C&EN suggested that there would be some pricing repercussions from the sole NMR manufacturer left in the business, Bruker:
A useful bad idea from me: isn't there some consortium of universities, government research centers and the like that could band together and purchase the Varian NMR division from Agilent and run it as basically a non-profit, just so Bruker would have a competitor (other than JEOL, that is?) Surely, this would be a boondoggle, but there might be some good from it.
So, anyone want to go into the NMR manufacturing business?
In response to an analyst’s question about whether Bruker would take the opportunity to raise NMR prices with Agilent gone, Laukien indicated that prices would indeed rise. “Historically, there had been, in some cases, just very aggressive discounting. I think that may abate quite a bit,” he said.This morning on Twitter, Cornell professor Dave Collum suggested that I write about Bruker pricing and how it has changed since Agilent has announced its departure. So, I am asking you, dear readers, if you've heard any rumblings about how Bruker's pricing has changed in the last year or two...
A useful bad idea from me: isn't there some consortium of universities, government research centers and the like that could band together and purchase the Varian NMR division from Agilent and run it as basically a non-profit, just so Bruker would have a competitor (other than JEOL, that is?) Surely, this would be a boondoggle, but there might be some good from it.
So, anyone want to go into the NMR manufacturing business?
Only anecdotal info at the moment - I'm looking for a used NMR and several of the vendors (these guys are primarily former Bruker employees) have mentioned that Bruker's prices have increased 20-30-% since Agilent exited.
ReplyDeleteI feel like Bruker is getting too complacent. We were thinking of ordering from them, but then JEOL came with like, a 1/3rd price discount for the same specs. And a much faster manufacturing time. It's hard to justify getting a Bruker with such a discount. Plus JEOL is still very active with development of new techniques and software. I was very impressed.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a dog in this fight (moved largely outside of the area after a long history of using both Bruker and Varian), but I would think that it's pretty unlikely that you would get a truly equivalent product with such a dramatic price difference. Of course for routine analysis sometimes "good enough" really is good enough.
DeleteAnyone have experience using Bruker and JEOL with "the same specs"? Just in case I get back into NMR...
C'mon man. Give me some credit. I'm not a complete idiot. Although, maybe that's what the Bruker and JEOL sales people thought about me when they were giving the presentation. There were circumstances that allowed a much harder bargaining line with JEOL, with the carrot of big future sales dangling in front of them. If you want a quick comparison (without reading all the brochures or listening to sales-people), just look at the parameters for a model of the same MHz for each company online.
DeleteWe'll see if all got suckered pretty soon I guess.
Forgot the "page" command
ReplyDeleteSigh, how disappointing, how do my fingers forget these things?
DeleteTook me a while to recognize that post title, you can tell I do my NMR processing on ACD these days. (Though I don't understand why you would want to sit at the instrument to do so, some people still do).
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me that there must be a decent number of used NMR around with site closures and going out of business sales, Bruker might well price themselves out of the market if they aren't careful. I mean, that new NMR might have fancy features or a higher field strength but all I want is an NMR spectrum, I don't need it to dance and make the coffee as well.
I was thinking that myself - there have got to be a lot of NMR's sitting around in the warehouses of used lab equipment dealers right now, with the way big pharma R&D sites have been closing left and right. Unless they just got chucked in dumpsters during a rush to empty buildings quickly, which I hear happened to a lot of other perfectly-good lab equipment small colleges would have loved to receive.
DeleteWe thought about purchasing a used NMR at my former company. After looking through the used equipment and auction websites and making a lot of phone calls, we realized that the risk of purchasing a machine that could have been improperly shut down wasn't worth the risk. The best way to figure out if the machine was maintained and shut down properly was to track down chemists that had used those machines. As one could imagine, chemists who had "politely" been shown the door at their previous company weren't always so welcome to share information about old equipment the company was now trying to liquidate to finance their Phase X study.
DeleteThose printing abbreviations instantly took me back to the basement in grad school, printing off those NMRs to proudly (or not-so proudly) take to my advisor. I miss doing my own NMRs.
ReplyDelete