Shimadzu Expands Partnership with Activated Research Company

Shimadzu is expanding its partnership with Activated Research Company (ARC), the instrument manufacturer announced during a press conference at Pittcon 2024 in San Diego, California. The partnership will bring ARC’s Polyarc and Jetanizer products in-house to Shimadzu.

“Starting in 2020, we did offer products through Shimadzu specifically and it was Jetanizer products. This expands it to the Polyarc and brings everything in house,” said Andrew Jones, CEO of ARC, speaking at Pittcon. “We couldn't think of a better home for these technologies than Shimadzu which of course embodies our values of innovation and quality.”

In 2020, Shimadzu announced that it would be offering ARC’s methanizer product, the Jetanizer, to its customers in the U.S. and subsidiaries around the world. A methanizer is a chemical reactor that converts carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide to methane. The new partnership expands the offering to include ARC’s Polyarc system, which is a catalytic microreactor for gas chromatographs (GCs) with flame ionization detectors (FIDs). The system works by converting all organic compounds to methane molecules prior to their detection by the FIDs. Both products will now be available to Shimadzu customers.

“Basically, it’s our expanding our realm of applications and greatly improving the sensitivity of the FID itself,” said Alan Owens, the GC and GCMS product manager at Shimadzu. “This technology is something we have been working closely with them on for a long time.” The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

In addition to announcing the partnership, Shimadzu also gave an overview of several new products it has launched, including the Brevis GC-2050 gas chromatograph and the GCMS-QB 2050 single quad gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. The Brevis GC-2050 is a more compact gas chromatograph, spanning 350 mm in width. The company’s GCMS-QB 2050 single quad gas chromatograph mass spectrometer was launched in January.