LOS ANGELES, March 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, global biopharmaceutical company Grifols SA, announced the decision of its Executive Committee to validate the “MiniFrac” Facility which will provide additional capacity thereby allowing the company to increase the overall plasma throughput at its Los Angeles manufacturing complex by as much as 700,000 liters. This will result in increased production of Grifols’ proprietary hemophilia therapies, immune globulins, and albumin. Grifols management estimates that validation and Food and Drug Administration approval will take approximately two years after which the “MiniFrac” Facility will be fully operational.
The “MiniFrac” Facility formed part of the initial asset acquisition from Mitsubishi-Alpha in July of 2003. It was built by Alpha in 1999 and while fully completed it was never validated nor approved by the FDA. The “MiniFrac” Facility is an independent structure that is adjacent to the existing fractionation facility of Grifols Los Angeles plant.
“With growing demand for our life saving therapies in the US and around the world, we are now in a position to begin increasing our plasma fractionation capacity,” said Victor Grifols, President and CEO of the Company. “Putting this additional capacity into service is one more step in the roll- out of our multi-year global growth strategy and is significant because it can be achieved by maximizing the value of our existing assets. This additional capacity will result in 2.2 million liters in the US and 2.1 million liters in Spain for total of 4.3 million liters of combined fractionation capacity for our two facilities,” continued Mr. Grifols.
Readying the “MiniFrac” Facility for service is part of a large-scale redevelopment plan for Grifols’ Los Angeles industrial complex to adapt to the production/quality standards of the group. Other elements of the redevelopment plan that started shortly after the acquisition of the Mitsubishi-Alpha assets include standardizing the Albumin production processes with those in place at the Company’s facilities in Spain, and the validation of a newly constructed, state-of-the-art facility dedicated to aseptic filling and bulk processing. Since 2004, Grifols’ investments in its US facilities have focused on adapting and modernizing the company’s production equipment and processes. In 2002 the Company launched an aggressive global growth strategy and in the past four years has invested over $300 million in US production and logistics facilities, product licenses, and dedicated plasma collection operations.
Standardization across the US and Spanish facilities will optimize production processes and assure that all products meet the high standards of safety, efficacy, and quality that the Grifols name is synonymous with.
About Plasma Therapies
Human plasma is used to produce a number of life saving therapies that treat inherited rare diseases such as hemophilia, primary immune deficiencies, genetic emphysema, as well as shock, trauma, and burns. Unlike traditional small molecule pharmaceuticals, the production of plasma therapies begins with the donation of human plasma which is then processed to extract specific therapeutic proteins. The entire process from donation to product can take between 7 to 9 months. Maintaining an adequate and readily available supply of plasma is essential to assuring continuous production of much needed life- saving therapies. Grifols is a major provider of plasma therapies to critically ill patients in more than 90 countries around the world.
About Grifols
The Grifols Company has been present in healthcare since 1940, creating innovative products and services based on the values of ethics and responsibility. Our activities focus on fulfilling the needs of healthcare professionals working in therapeutics, pharmacy, diagnostics and blood banking. For more than 60 years, Grifols companies have developed, manufactured and marketed products designed to improve human health. We manufacture products of proven efficacy, quality and safety. More information about Grifols can be found at http://www.grifols.com or contact:
Chris Healey Grifols, Inc. 2111 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 700 Arlington, Virginia 22201 chris.healey@grifols.com (703) 351-5004 phone (703) 276-9052 fax
Grifols, Inc.
CONTACT: Chris Healey of Grifols, Inc., +1-703-351-5004,chris.healey@grifols.com
Web site: http://www.grifols.com/
