Standardisation in the construction of the new Biotest plant for blood plasma fractionation offers benefits for both the company and the plant engineers. Plant engineers can purchase predefined components quickly and easily and get access to favourable terms thanks to an established component pool, while for Biotest the overall cost for spare parts supply is reduced. Other benefits include a reduced training requirement for maintenance and service staff, shorter downtimes as well as reduced maintenance workload in the event of a fault. It also means lower documentation and supply management costs.
“When it came to the construction of the new building with the modern large-scale plant for blood plasma fractionation, there were two main aspects to consider,” explains Matthias Mahle, Head of Technical Project Management BNL at Biotest. “The first was expansion of capacity beyond the performance limits of the existing plants, and the other was efficiency. As a pharmaceutical company working in blood plasma processing, we are competing in a globally consolidating market. We are strengthening our market position by obtaining more products from the same amount of plasma,” says Mahle. In the new plant, Biotest will be able to manufacture a greater number of products as well as increase the yield and its purity. “With the existing systems, some of which date back to 1995, we were able to obtain three different products from the plasma. The new systems will be able to manufacture up to six products,” emphasises Mahle. “A high level of efficiency in production is essential, as the raw material ‒ blood plasma ‒ accounts for more than 50 per cent of the production costs.” Whereas the capacity limit used to be 800,000 litres, the new plant will be able to fractionate up to 1.4 million litres of blood plasma.
Biotest AG
Landsteinerstrasse 5
63303 Dreieich
Germany