Grifols inaugurates a new plant of the Diagnostic Division in Brazil to manufacture storage and collection bags for blood components

Barcelona (Spain), November 22, 2017.- Grifols (MCE:GRF, MCE:GRF.P NASDAQ:GRFS), one of the top three global producers of plasma-derived therapies and a forerunner in transfusional medicine, today announced the inauguration a new production plant in Brazil that will manufacture collection, separation, storage and transfusion bags for blood components, such as plasma, red blood cells and platelets. The production facility is currently in the approval stages and expected to become operative in 2018. It is located in Campo Largo, 20 kilometers from the center of Curitiba, the capital city of Paraná (Brazil).

The inauguration was attended by the Spanish ambassador to Brazil, Fernando Villalonga Campos, and the prefect of Campo Largo, Marcelo Puppi, as well as other notable personalities of public institutions from Brazil, who were accompanied by Víctor Grífols Roura, chairman of Grifols, and co-CEOs Raimon Grífols Roura and Víctor Grífols Deu, among other company representatives.

Grifols has allocated Eur 16.5 million to the project, which will allow the company to boost its presence in Latin America and meet the growing global demand for this type of product, developed by its Diagnostic Division.

More than 5,500 m² of Grifols technology

The new 5,525-m² site will be used to manufacture collection and storage bags for blood components. Production is scheduled to start in 2018. In an initial stage, the plant will have a dosage and assembly line with a total production capacity of 2 million kits per year, which will double in a second phase to reach 4 million. The Campo Largo facility currently employs 30 people, although its staff will grow to 150 when the site becomes fully operational. The industrial complex will also house Grifols' sales subsidiary in Brazil.

The facility was designed by Grifols Engineering, a company within the Grifols Group specialized in pharmaceutical and biotechnological engineering processes. The highly automated plant will integrate leading-edge in-house technology created by Grifols industrial complex in Murcia (Spain), where the company has three decades of experience manufacturing these products.

In order to meet the increasing demand in the Brazilian market and other Latin American countries for these products, the installations in Brazil and Spain will initially be complementary, although in the long term, both plants will operate as independent production units.