Private | |
Industry | Life sciences |
Founded | Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany (1945) |
Headquarters | Hamburg, Germany |
Area served
|
Worldwide |
Products | Laboratory devices and consumables |
Revenue | €651.5 million (2016) |
€140.1 million (2016) | |
Number of employees
|
3,029 (2016) |
Website | www |
Eppendorf, a company with its registered office in Germany, develops, produces and sells products and services for laboratories around the world.
Eppendorf products are used in academic and industrial research laboratories, e.g. in companies in the pharmaceutical, biotech, chemical and food industries. They are also used in laboratories that perform clinical or environmental analysis, in forensic laboratories, and in industrial laboratories where industrial process analysis, production and quality assurance are performed. The company is the world's market leader in this area.
Eppendorf develops, produces and sells devices, consumables and services for laboratories. They include pipettes, automated pipetting systems, dispensers, laboratory centrifuges and mixers as well as consumables such as reaction vessels and pipette tips. In addition, Eppendorf manufactures ultra-low temperature freezers, bioreactors, CO2 incubators, shakers, DNA amplification equipment (polymerase chain reaction), spectrometers, and cell manipulation systems.
Eppendorf was founded in 1945 by Heinrich Netheler and Hans Hinz in the Hamburg district of Eppendorf on the grounds of the University Medical Center, originally as a workshop for medical devices. Dr Netheler and Dr Hinz used their extensive knowledge of radar technology to develop both the first ultrasound device and the stimulator, a machine used for diagnosing and therapeutically treating muscle and nerve damage. They also invented an electrical thermometer (the “Thermorapid”) that, for the first time, enabled body temperature to be measured in just a few seconds.
In 1965, the company and its approximately 200 employees moved to a facility in Barkhausenweg in the Hamburg district of Hummelsbüttel, where Eppendorf has been headquartered ever since. Today, the company's focus has shifted from the development and sale of medical technology to laboratory devices, consumables and services. During the 1960s, the holistic approach used for the Eppendorf microliter system set new standards in the laboratory world. Its perfectly harmonized system for dosing, mixing, tempering, centrifugation, cooling, separating, storing and transporting samples is still a central element in today's laboratory work. In 2000, Eppendorf Gerätebau, Netheler und Hinz GmbH was renamed and became Eppendorf AG.