Pall's sale of blood operation shifts focus

Pall Corp.'s decision to sell some of its blood and transfusion assets, for $550 million, marks a shift in strategy for the Port Washington-based global filtration maker during its first year under a new chief executive, Larry Kingsley.

The Sunday announcement brings at least a partial end to a blood-filtering technology operation created by the company founder, the late David Pall, a quarter-century ago amid growing global alarm about the spread of HIV through transfusions.

Pall officials Monday declined an interview request. The company said in a statement that the sale, to Massachusetts-based Haemonetics Corp., is a good one because it sharpens the company's focus on areas of its business that are most likely to grow. Pall makes a wide range of filtration, separation and purification products.

Pall stock closed Monday at $59.61 a share, down 80 cents.

It was in 1988 that an industry analyst told Newsday he was very impressed with Pall Corp.'s new blood filter that "separates white blood cells and the viruses that cause AIDS and hepatitis from blood plasma." David Pall himself had invented the filters.

The technology was one of the final achievements by Pall, then in his mid-70s, who had first developed porous stainless steel while working on the U.S. nuclear bomb effort, the Manhattan Project, during World War II. After the war he founded his company in Glen Cove, commercializing the porous steel technology and eventually adding a range of high-performance filters made with other metals, glass fiber and plastic polymer.

In the early 1990s, shepherding the new blood-filtering enterprise to a global market soon became the responsibility of Abraham Krasnoff, Pall's longtime business partner, who had just been appointed chairman of the board. Krasnoff's son Eric later became the Pall Corp. chief executive.

Kingsley's appointment as president and chief executive in October 2011 marked the end of more than 60 years of Krasnoff family leadership at Pall Corp. By that time it had become one of Long Island's largest companies, with nearly $3 billion in annual revenue, and one of the world's purification and filtration giants.

Pall Corp.'s decision to sell off the blood assets will transfer 1,300 employees to Haemonetics when the sale closes this year. The company has about 500 employees on Long Island and 10,400 others worldwide.

In the transaction, Haemonetics will get blood collection, filtration and processing systems and equipment. It will also get manufacturing operations in California, Mexico, Italy and Puerto Rico.

Pall said it expects an after-tax gain of $230 million to $240 million from the sale.