The state's largest medical laboratory says it doesn't anticipate major changes with its sale to an Australian company aside from those that will give it more access to new technology and the best practices of other labs in six countries.

On Sunday, Sonic Healthcare Ltd. announced it had reached an agreement to buy Clinical Laboratories of Hawaii LLP and its associated pathology practice, Pan Pacific Pathologies, for $121 million in a transaction scheduled to close in September pending government approvals. In announcing the transaction, Clinical Laboratories said Sonic intended to keep the local managers and company name.

"Everything that was in place before the sale will be in place after the sale," Clinical Laboratories spokesman Ed Nishioka said yesterday. "The exciting thing for Clinical is they're still the local company they were but now they have these world-class resources."

Dr. Moon Park, who founded Clinical Laboratories in 1971, will stay on as a consultant while Alyssa Park will continue as chief executive of the company with more than 900 employees.

The purchase will bring Clinical into Sonic's fast-growing family of diagnostic laboratory companies.

The Sydney-based company has been expanding in Australia, New Zealand and Europe. It entered the United States in 2005 and had purchased nine other medical testing companies in this country before targeting Clinical Laboratories.

"The acquisition of Clinical Laboratories of Hawaii further expands Sonic's footprint in the U.S. laboratory market place, and offers synergies with our existing operations in terms of purchasing, esoteric testing and sharing of best practice systems and laboratory protocols," said Dr. Colin Goldschmidt, Sonic chief executive officer and managing director.

Nishioka said Clinical Laboratories hadn't been on the market and that an agreement to sell came after Sonic approached its owners. They in turn retained Houlihan Lokey, an investment bank concentrating on smaller merger and acquisition deals, to help advise it on the transaction.

In the U.S., Sonic is in competition with testing giants such as Quest Diagnostics Inc., which also has been expanding in the United States through acquisitions, and Laboratory Corp. of America. In Hawai'i it will compete with Diagnostic Laboratory Services Inc., which has part ownership from Kuakini Health System and a Queen's Medical Center affiliate.

Sonic said Clinical Laboratories, with its more than 70 locations in the state, has prospective annual revenues of more than $110 million this year and that the purchase, when completed, will add to Sonic's earnings.

Clinical Laboratories is owned in part by hospital operators Hawaii Pacific Health and the Hawaii Health Systems Corp. It also is owned in part by St. Francis Health Systems Corp. Its ties with them include servicing 14 acute care hospitals in the state as well as operating more than 55 outpatient service centers.

It has on-site laboratories at Kapi'olani, Hawaii Medical Center, Straub Clinic & Hospital and other hospitals.