Irish consultancy DPS buys US project manager Biometrics

PROJECT MANAGEMENT and consultancy firm DPS Engineering is expanding into the US with the purchase of Biometrics, a Massachusetts-based firm.

DPS confirmed the deal in a statement yesterday, but did not reveal the purchase price.

The company has already done some work in the US, but managing director Frank Keogh said it had been looking for opportunities to move in there.

“We believe that the acquisition of Biometrics is the ideal vehicle for that expansion,” he said.

Biometrics provides project management, engineering and consultancy services to industries such as biopharmaceuticals (developing drugs from biological instead of chemical compounds).

The firm employs 20 people at its base in Framingham, Massachusetts and its clients include Dow Chemicals, Abbott Laboratories, Immunogen, Acambis, Celltech and Astra Zeneca.

It recently won a contract for a bio-processing facility project for the University of Massachusetts.

Its chief executive, Dr Stephen Fitzpatrick, founded the company in 1991. He will join the DPS board when the deal is completed.

DPS has operations in Cork, Dublin, Europe and the Far East. It is focused on the process industry (pharmaceuticals and chemicals), oil and gas, energy and micro-electronics.

It has a turnover of €35 million and plans to boost this to €50 million within the next five years, primarily through overseas contracts in the biopharmaceutical sector.

As part of that plan, half of DPS’s turnover will come from its overseas activities by 2014.

DPS Engineering was founded in 1974. Its management, headed by Mr Keogh, bought out the business in 1996 with the backing of external investors.

The company first expanded outside Ireland by establishing an office in Leiden in the Netherlands in 1998.

By 2004 it employed more than 270 people in Dublin, Cork and Leiden.

In 2007, the group expanded into the Far East, setting up of a base in Singapore.

Further growth since then resulted in its workforce exceeding the 400 mark.

Mr Keogh predicted that the deal announced yesterday would result in further expansion.