Grifols closes 29 plasma donation centers in the United States

The Catalan multinational pharmaceutical company Grifols will close 29 plasma donation centers in the United States, where it is the main operator with more than 300 centers. In a statement this Friday, it framed the decision within "a broader and ongoing strategy to improve long-term productivity, efficiency, and sustainability" of its network in the country.

The decision comes after the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recently approved the use of plasma from Egypt, "a highly scalable source" which, according to Grifols, opens the door to "reducing in the future" the use of that from the United States in international markets. Precisely in Egyptian territory, the Catalan company launched in 2020 "the first comprehensive plasma ecosystem in Africa". It is a public-private collaboration project that has 16 donation centers and four more planned for this year, a state-of-the-art analysis laboratory and a logistics center, in addition to a processing plant under development.

Despite this, the listed company insists that it plans to increase the collection of US plasma – where it sees "strong growth potential" – to face the "solid" upward prospects of medicines derived from this substance. It intends to do this by improving the productivity of each center and reassigning resources to those with greater projection. Currently, 65% of the plasma used worldwide to manufacture medicines comes from the USA, a country from which Europe imports about 40% of the plasma it needs.

Grifols has not clarified how many workers the closure of centers will affect or when it will materialize, only stating that it will be "in the coming weeks." Meanwhile, the affected centers will continue to operate to ensure donations, and will then be redirected to other company centers.

Plasma collection as a "base"

Grifols manufactures plasma-derived medicines and diagnostic solutions and, in recent decades, has developed a unique and fully vertically integrated platform in the United States to manage domestic plasma collection, fractionation, purification, and commercialization. In this Friday's statement, it has established the collection of the substance as "the foundation of the vertically integrated model".

Last year, the Catalan multinational had a turnover of 7,524 million euros, 7% more than in the previous fiscal year at constant exchange rates. It focused its efforts on strengthening its balance sheet and reducing financial costs, ending the year with a net profit that grew by 156%, to over 400 million.