Bayer Buys Sclavo Blood Fractionation Facility For $37 Mill

Bayer SpA, a subsidiary of the German Bayer group, is to acquire from Italian company Sclavo a production facility in Rosia, Siena, which fractionates blood plasma. The purchase price is in the region of 55 million Deutschemarks ($37 million). Bayer says that it intends to spend a further 60 million marks on a modern plant to meet future requirements, and that it will retain Sclavo's existing 105 employees, helping safeguard jobs in the region.

This project in Italy will establish Bayer's first European fractionation facility, said Klaus Behrendt, manager of the Bayer pharmaceutical business group's European operations, and "will also introduce the highest-quality standards." This is "fully in line with our global strategy for biological products, which is designed to expand our position in this field," he added.

In future, the German company says, the Rosia unit will make a number of products including immunoglobulins and prolastin. The latter, it adds, is given to patients with pulmonary emphysema of genetic origin. Bayer already has production capacity for biological products at its US facilities in Clayton, North Carolina, and in Berkeley, California.