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Home Market News Grifols to invest $360 million to expand its manufacturing capacities for plasma-derived therapies
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8 Mar 2016

Grifols to invest $360 million to expand its manufacturing capacities for plasma-derived therapies

With these new investments, Grifols increases its production capacity to continue covering the expected growing demand in the plasma-derived products until 2028–2030.

The Board of Directors of Grifols has approved a plan for new industrial investments for the Bioscience division for the period 2016–2021, with the goal of expanding the manufacturing capacity to cover the expected growing demand of plasma-derived products for the upcoming years.

The total amount approved is US Dollars 360 million. The investments will increase the plasma fractionation capacity and purification of the several proteins.

The breakdown of the different projects is as follows:

  • Construction of a new plasma fractionation plant at the industrial complex at Clayton (North Carolina), with a fractionation capacity of 6 million liters/year. The construction will begin the first quarter of 2017 and is scheduled to start production in early 2022.

    • Plasma fractionation is the process of extracting the different fractions that contain the proteins with therapeutic uses. Afterwards, these fractions are purified and sterilized in specific plants for each of the proteins obtained.

    To process the fractions that will be produced in the new plasma fractionation plant, and then obtain the proteins, three new purification and sterile filling plants will need to be constructed for three of the main proteins commercialized by Grifols:

  • New purification plant for intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) at Clayton to process the fraction II+III from the new fractionation plant to obtain between 25 and 30 million grams/year of IVIG, under the Gamunex brand.

    • It is scheduled to come into operation in late 2021.

  • Purification plant for albumin at the Grifols facilities in Dublin (Ireland) with capacity to produce between 130 and 150 million grams/year of albumin (Albutein), from fraction V.

    • The company schedules to bring forward the construction of this plant to cover the particularly growing market demand of this protein. The construction is scheduled to commence at the end of 2016, so it will begin production in early 2020.

  • Purification plant for alpha 1-antitrypsin (Prolastin) at the Grifols site at Parets del Vallés (Barcelona, Spain). The company projected to reach full capacity to purify this protein by 2018. Therefore, in 2014, a decision was taken to start the construction of this plant. It is expected that FDA and EMA licences will be granted in late 2017 or early 2018.

    The current purification plants to obtain other plasma proteins such as factor VIII or factor IX have sufficient capacity to absorb the increase that may be generated by this new fractionation plant.

    This investment plan considers that the start of new production facilities require an average of approximately 5 years once the investment is approved until the regulatory authorizations are granted to start the commercialization of products.

    Grifols estimates that the production capacities will be sufficient to ensure Grifols' ability to cover the expected growing demand in its markets until 2028–2030.

    All the projects will be designed and executed by Grifols Engineering, as usual within these types of investments. Grifols Engineering is the in-house company specialized in the construction of this type of facilities. Its wealth of experience gives Grifols a clear competitive advantage, not only in terms of time and obtaining approvals for the new plants but also in relation to the final cost.

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