Nasdaq-listed IT services group Cognizant has made its second Irish acquisition in just three months with a deal to buy Cork company Zenith Technologies for an undisclosed sum.
Zenith is a privately-held life sciences manufacturing technology services company based in Ringaskiddy that specialises in implementing digital technologies to manage, control and optimise drug and medical device production.
Founded in 1998, Zenith employs some 300 people in Ireland and more than 500 people overseas. It works with nine of the world's 10 largest biopharmaceutical manufacturers and last year forecast sales of €100 million for 2019 after recording turnover of €85 million in 2018.
Strategic investment
General Electric, through its subsidiary GE Healthcare Lifesciences took a 30 per cent strategic investment in Zenith in 2017.
"In joining Cognizant, we are bringing together two respected life sciences service provider brands with complementary technology and manufacturing operations expertise," said Joe Haugh, chief executive, Zenith Technologies.
“Our combined business will drive process excellence through tighter integration of manufacturing processes and systems, the efficient harnessing of information and analytics across the manufacturing value chain, and the adoption of IoT technologies delivering manufacturing 4.0,” he added.
Finbos platform
The acquisition comes just three months after Cognizant snapped up Meritsoft, a Dublin-based specialist financial services software company best known for its Finbos platform, which manages taxes, fees, commissions, and cash flow functions between different institutions.
Cognizant was founded as an in-house technology unit of Dun & Bradstreet in 1994. The company, which competes with Accenture and with major Indian IT companies such as Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and Infosys, recorded revenues of $16 billion last year.
"In acquiring Zenith Technologies, we expand Cognizant's IoT portfolio and extend our life sciences domain expertise by becoming a single-source provider of end-to-end smart factory capabilities," said Cognizant chief executive Brian Humphries.
A graduate of the University of Ulster. Mr Humphries formerly led Vodafone Business in the UK before replacing Francisco D'Souza as chief executive of Cognizant in April.
