Australia’s CSL has opened the first phase of a $170 million plasma products plant that will boost production for the U.S. and Europe as well as Asia-Pacific markets.
CSL today said the new facility will add about 100 tons of albumin production at its CSL Behring site in Broadmeadows, Australia. A second phase will follow, which when complete, will double that capacity.
The company, which received government support for the $230 million Australian dollar project, has pledged to add up to 200 jobs by 2026 and maintain the 1,000 positions already at the site.
CSL said it has, over the last five years, invested about AU$610 million ($459 million) in the site, which opened in 2014 with large-scale production of novel recombinant therapies for international clinical trials. The following year, it opened a second facility that produces a product to treat immune disorders.
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Other plasma product companies have also expanded in recent years. Grifols, the Spain-based specialist in blood plasma products, in 2015 opened a $370 million plasma fractionation plant at its site in Clayton, North Carolina, and then last year said it would spend another $210 million to build another fractional plant and a purification plant there.