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| Green Cross' South Korea headquarters--Courtesy of Green Cross |
South Korea's Green Cross in 2012 declared its intention to become a "global healthcare leader" and, in pursuit of that goal, is building new manufacturing facilities around the world. Just weeks after said it would build a cell-manufacturing plant in China, the biopharma company announced it will build a $240 million plasma-processing facility in Canada.
The company said today that it will build the 225,000-square-foot facility on a 700,000-square-foot site on Montreal Technoparc's Saint-Laurent Campus. The facility will have a 1 million liter capacity annually and expects to have 200 employees there when it is operational in 2019.
It is the first intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) and albumin manufacturing plant in Canada and one of the first projects to spring from the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement hammered out last year. The Quebec government intends to chip in an CA$8 million ($6.4 million) grant and a CA$17 million ($13.6 million) loan to help pay for it, the Montreal Gazette reports. The company said that the Korean National Pension Service is investing CA$70 million ($56 million) from its private equity fund. Green Cross will invest another CA$40 million ($32 million) to set up plasma collection facilities in the U.S., the newspaper said.
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| Green Cross chairman Il-Sup Huh |
"The construction of this manufacturing facility is a cornerstone of our global expansion strategy," Green Cross chairman Il-Sup Huh said in a statement. "From Montreal, we will be serving the Canadian market and exporting to countries including the United States and China."
Based in Yongin, South Korea, Green Cross specializes in the development and manufacturing of plasma derivatives, vaccines and recombinant proteins. The company, which has a plasma plant in China, said in March that it would build a cell therapy manufacturing center in China's Guizhou province to distribute products in China.
Green Cross is not alone in expanding production of plasma products in North America. Last year, Spanish blood plasma specialist Grifols opened a $370 million, 155,000-square-foot plasma fractionation plant in Clayton, NC.
- here's the release
- more from the Montreal Gazette