Des Moines, IA —The Eurofins North America food division announces the successful purchase of Craft Technologies, Inc., a contract laboratory providing analysis of nutrients, vitamins, carotenoids, bioflavonoids and phytochemicals.

Craft Technologies, located in Wilson, NC, serves private industry, governments and academia world-wide. The lab occupies over 10,000 square feet and includes a range of instrumentation for HPLC, UHPLC, GC, MS, spectrophotometric, fluorometric, ELISA and clinical testing. Craft Technologies brings a broad scope of analytical services to Eurofins for products ranging from human and animal foods, to dietary supplements, biological samples and tissues.

"I am excited to have Neal Craft and his team bringing strength in biologically active components," said Lars Reimann, chief scientific officer, Eurofins Scientific, Inc. "They will have capabilities that are a nice addition to the standard routine performances within the Eurofins Group."

Craft Technologies' alignment with Eurofins carries with it a portfolio of work in fighting global nutrition challenges. Most recently, the lab received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to identify and test methods of collecting finger-stick blood spot samples and measuring 11 nutritional biomarkers. The goal is to apply the findings of this research in developing countries with adverse health, environmental and infrastructure conditions.

Since its founding, Craft Technologies has been involved in global nutrition assessment. In 1994 the lab developed a test for vitamin A in dried blood spot that has since been used in over 17 developing nations.

Recent work at the lab has focused on meeting analysis needs for vitamin K, vitamin D, bixin/norbixin, curcuminoids, anthocyanins, less common carotenoids, nutritional biomarkers, and very high-resolution separations. Craft Technologies will also bring new vitamin analyses to the Eurofins Group, including assays for hydroxylated vitamin D and vitamin D metabolites in biological samples, and vitamin K tests for menaquinones including MK-4, MK-7, and MK-9.

"From a technical standpoint, [Craft Technologies'] knowledge of testing and assay development in food chemistry and nutritional supplements is well known within industry and government agencies," said David Bryant, Eurofins Group SVP North America.