Neogen Corp., Lansing, Mich., acquired the food safety and veterinary genomic assets of its Chinese distributor Beijing Anapure BioScientific Co., Ltd. Anapure has been a distributor of Neogen's food safety products for more than 10 years.

"As we've shown with our acquisitions of successful distributor partners in Europe, Brazil and elsewhere, creating a direct presence in an important global market can accelerate our expansion into that market," says James Herbert, Neogen's chairman and CEO. "China's burgeoning middle class, with its rapidly growing demand for higher quality meat and dairy products, makes the country a substantial growth opportunity for Neogen products—both for animal production on the country's farms and in processing plants throughout China's food processing and distribution industry.

"Acquiring these strategic assets from Anapure will give us direct access to the western and multi-national food companies that have located in China, most of which are already Neogen customers elsewhere," Herbert adds. "The acquisition will also allow us to build upon our existing Neogen China infrastructure to provide a foothold in Asia, from which we will be able to expand throughout the region."

Anapure was founded in 1998, and has focused on food and environment safety testing, blood typing and small animal disease diagnosis throughout China. Its food safety testing business includes more than 700 customers in the dairy, beverage, meat and poultry industries.