Liquid Handling Market

The image above shows an overview of the liquid handling market, as well as the competitor landscape of the 3 main segments: automated liquid handlers, pipettes and liquid handling accessories and consumables.

Automated Liquid Handlers and Pipettes automate process of handling liquids and reduce error risk in laboratories. They have been extensively used during the COVID-19 pandemic for processing PCR tests and for laboratory research purposes. As a consequence, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the Liquid Handling market was ~50% higher in size than in 2019.

Hamilton and Tecan are market leaders in Automated Liquid Handling, with Beckman Coulter and Perkin Elmer closely following. In the manual Pipettes market, the key players are Eppendorf, Mettler Toledo and Integra Biosciences.

Although the market is currently fragmented, it is steadily becoming more consolidated. Endress + Hauser acquired a controlling share in Analytik Jena in 2013. Douglas Scientific was acquired by LGC Group in 2016. In 2019, Labcyte was acquired by Beckman Coulter, which was previously acquired by Danaher in 2011. Most recently, Waters acquired Andrew Alliance in 2022.

The 3 main segments in liquid handling are automated handling, pipettes and accessories and consumables.

The key players in automated liquid handling are Hamilton and Tecan, followed closely by Beckman Coulter, PerkinElmer and Eppendorf.

The key players in the pipettes segment are Mettler Toledo and Eppendorf. Other companies, such as Integra, Corning and Gilson, are also active.

Automated liquid handlers are robotic devices that automate the liquid handling process, where thousands of samples of a liquid are tested for certain attributes in a laboratory setting.

Liquid handling systems are primarily used in pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, life sciences and other industries that require repetitive screening of a high number of samples.