By 2019, through the company naming strategy, the Smithers brand was becoming familiar across numerous industries and around the world. With potential and existing customers feeling more comfortable about working with a diverse service portfolio company, the Smithers Executive Leadership Team determined the time was right for a significant rebranding as well as a restructuring of Smithers. 

 After countless client focus groups, months of research, and lively debates, the decision was made to market the companies as divisions that are a part of Smithers. The unique names were removed, and five divisions were formed and named:

• Smithers Materials and Science Engineering
• Tire and a variety of polymer-based materials, food contact, distribution, packaging, and medical device testing.
• Smithers Information
• Market intelligence, consulting, research, and reports along with event management.
• Smithers Environmental Risk Sciences
• Agriculture science testing to include physical chemistry, fate, metabolism and ecotoxicology package for a new conventional or biological active ingredient registration, gap-filling studies for product renewals, and a critical suite of tests for new formulation.
• Smithers Quality Assessments
• Auditing certification services for an array of Quality Management Systems.
• Smithers Pharmaceutical Development Services
• Bioanalytical testing for preclinical and clinical drug development services for large molecules, gene therapies, and vaccine development.  

At this time, Dave Schwarz was Smithers Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, and he led this momentous initiative. It was a major change for the organization not only visually but culturally. It took a little over a year to configure the divisions and launch a new brand. It was quite an undertaking, but Smithers emerged stronger and more united than ever.

Pharmaceutical Development Services Evolves

In 2019, two major changes occurred for Smithers Pharmaceutical Development Services Division. 

The first change came in May 2019. For the first time, Smithers divested a business. The toxicology service offering was sold to Bioanalytical Systems, Inc., (BASi). At the time, Mike noted, “Selling a business unit is never an easy decision, but we recognized that the scope and scale of BASi coupled with our team’s scientific expertise would benefit our clients and team tremendously. Operating as a single site toxicology business presented operational efficiency challenges that could only be overcome with the added sites and in-house capabilities of BASi.” 

A few months later, in July 2019, Smithers acquired a Ewing, New Jersey, facility from LabCorp. This new facility allowed Smithers to expand its existing bioanalytical capabilities and to build an ultraclean room to support the development of cell and gene therapies.

Forming the Medical Device Testing Division Amid the Covid-19 Global Pandemic

In 2017, Smithers opened both a US-based and a UK-based dedicated laboratory for testing drug delivery devices with a particular specialty in combination delivery products. These products combine a drug delivery device such as a syringe with an associated medication. By the time 2019 arrived, it was obvious this department was large enough to be spun out into its own division. 

Before this could occur, history once again stepped in with something unforeseen. A new virus would emerge near the end of 2019 and in just a few months, it would shut down the world. 

This new virus spread so quickly that by March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that there had been 118,000 deaths worldwide and that the newly named Covid-19 virus was now a pandemic. 

As was the case everywhere, the global Smithers team immediately embarked on a steep learning curve to ensure everyone’s safety. As a vital service, the Smithers laboratory-based services globally remained open throughout the three years of the shutdown. Significant remodeling of the lab spaces were executed rapidly so that team members could maintain a six-foot distance. New safety protocols were adopted such as frequent hand washing and wearing a mask to stay safe while working. Smithers global office-based team members were sent home officially on March 16, 2020, and had to learn how to work remotely, a first-time experience for most. 

Interestingly, Gael Peron, the Vice President of the soon to be announced Medical Device Testing Division, got to experience his first day at Smithers on Monday, March 2, 2020, just two weeks before the global shut down. 

It would be easy to assume that a world shutdown would slow Smithers down. In fact, as had been the case from 1925 to 2020, Smithers was not deterred at all, and despite a chaotic world, it continued to grow. 

 On July 20, 2020 Smithers announced its sixth division, Medical Device Testing.