AcroMeta to divest life-sciences business, pursue minerals trading business

ACROMETA intends to divest its life-sciences business as part of a review of its long-term strategy, the specialist engineering firm said on Monday (Oct 21). 

The group has entered into an agreement to dispose of all its shares in Life Science Incubator Holdings for S$2.7 million. 

AcroMeta’s executive director Lawrence Toh said the sale would enable the group to “unlock value for future growth”: “We have determined that the group’s resources and management efforts would be better directed towards other potential business opportunities in mineral-sands trading.”

The proposed disposal will be made conditional upon approval by the shareholders of the company at an extraordinary general meeting to be held in due course

Upon the completion of the disposal of these shares, Life Science Incubator Holdings will cease to be a subsidiary of the group. 

AcroMeta said on Monday that it has inked a non-binding memorandum of understanding with a Malaysian company, Constance Holding, to facilitate further collaboration in mineral-sand trading. Constance Holding supplies sand for land-reclamation projects across Malaysia.  

“This latest development represents another significant milestone in the group’s ongoing pursuit of regional opportunities,” the company said.

It added: “The group is actively engaged in negotiations with potential international buyers, with formal offtake agreements anticipated in the near future.”

The Business Times reported in May 2023 that AcroMeta, having launched Life Science Incubator in 2021, was eyeing an expansion of its business. 

AcroMeta’s then-executive chairman Levin Lee said coworking lab facilities like those at Life Science Incubator rent out laboratories with specialised lab equipment to companies which want to do research, but do not have the space or even capital to set up labs. Coworking lab facilities thus “let researchers focus on the science and innovating” instead of wasting time and money on building and maintaining infrastructure. 

Lee’s aim had been to grow the coworking lab business in “parallel” with AcroMeta’s mainstay engineering, procurement and construction operations. 

In February 2024, he stepped down as executive chairman of AcroMeta for health reasons. 

Alan Cheong, Savills Singapore’s executive director of research and consultancy, previously said that coworking lab facilities are a “very niche space” with high barriers to entry, and which would require operators to have the domain knowledge to target life sciences startups.

However, Cushman and Wakefield research head Wong Xian Yang expects demand for coworking lab spaces to grow in the coming years, as Singapore’s life-sciences industry expands.

In August 2024, Lendlease and US private equity giant Warburg Pincus teamed up to acquire a S$1.6 billion portfolio of assets in Singapore from a Reit owned by Blackstone and Lim Chap Huat, Soilbuild’s executive chairman. 

These assets, with a gross floor area of 4.5 million square feet, comprised business parks and high-tech industrial facilities tenanted to blue-chip companies in the life sciences, technology, advanced manufacturing and logistics sectors.