Biochemical Grifols to double its plasma production capacity and to build a new plant in the U.S.

Barcelona (ACN).- Grifols, the Catalan industrial group specialised in the pharmaceutical sector begun the construction of a new plasma facility next to Barcelona. The new plant will double its annual production of plasma, going from 2.1 to 4.1 million litres. The new plant will be located in Parets del Vallès, in Greater Barcelona, and will be built in 18 months. The 20 million euro project is part of a 433 million euro investment plan planned for 2008-2012. Grifols leads the blood plasma-based products’ market in Europe and is one of the top groups in the word. The company has an ambitious expansion plan in the United States, a strategic growing area for the group. In June it bought Talecris Biotherapeutics for 3.4 billion dollars, an operation that will make Grifols hold a third of the US market of blood-plasma products.

Barcelona’s new plant will be used as a model for the proposed 4 million-litre plant that the company plans to build in the United States by 2014. Grifols already had a presence in the US. It has another plasma plant in Los Angeles that produces 2.2 million litres per year. The new US plant will allow Grifols to increase its total capacity to 6.3 million litres by 2014. In addition, Grifols has also built a new plasma analysis laboratory in San Marcos, Texas.

An example of Grifols importance in the blood plasma-products market is a WikiLeaks cable from 2008 by the U.S. State Department. The American Foreign Affairs Department chose three strategic points of interest to the United States in Spain: Grifols, Gibraltar and the pipeline linking the Iberian Peninsula with Algeria. One reason for such interest may be that Grifols has 20 subsidiaries worldwide and a turnover close to 738.8 million euros in the first nine months of 2010.