Background to Magellan Instruments

Magellan Instruments Ltd started in January 2004 by John Bonham-Carter. The aim was to develop a company with specialised reliable bioprocess products of high quality and long life (& to allow John to enjoy the same).

The first product, the Tandem gas analyser, was bought from Adaptive Biosystems Ltd (previously a fermenter manufacturer), and is now manufactured in the UK. The Tandem is sold worldwide through distributors, with about 400 installed in many countries.

Magellan acquired the European rights to distribute our second product, the ATF perfusion and filtration system, manufactured by Refine Technology (NJ, USA). The ATF is gaining a reputation for being the best engineering solution for cell culture perfusion for anyone in process development and manufacture.

The Tandem gas analyser and the ATF perfusion and filtration system are able to integrate with any fermenter or bioreactor relatively simply. They are both already working in facilities with vessels from less than a litre working volume to large scale GMP manufacture (100m3 and 1000L).

John Bonham-Carter, Director

John originally worked in media, rather than science, and the first business he founded was a free-ads newspaper in the south of France, called Annonces Vertes. He then joined a satirical political magazine in London, the Insider, before starting at Adaptive Biosystems as a director. After a year working with W H Promation, he founded Magellan Instruments. A Scandinavian subsidiary was started in 2005.

He has been involved for many years in developing and selling instruments and software for bioprocessing, including product analysis, electronic noses, software sensors and predictive models, and has won three UK government awards for doing so. John is a senior visiting staff member at UCL and lectures on the Fermentation MBI course. He also helped organise the ESACT 2005 conference, and is involved with the networks NbiNet and BESG. He is a consultant for a variety of bio-related companies.