Huge Russian plasma products plant moving forward

In May, Russia's Generium said it would build a massive blood plasma plant in the country to make antibodies, blood coagulants and albumin. Now a Swedish design firm said it starting on the engineering for the project.

Sweden's KeyPlants last week said it was picked to design the 600,000-liter plasma manufacturing facility for MasterPlasma, which is part of the Generium Science and Technology Park. It will be in the Vladimir region of Russia. It said the facility is expected to be operational in the second half of 2017.

MasterPlasma has a deal to license technology from Canada-based ProMetic Lifesciences for a number of plasma-derived biopharmaceuticals, which it intends to sell both in and outside of Russia, KeyPlants said. As a result, the facility will be designed to FDA and EMA manufacturing standards. MasterPlasma's largest shareholder is Pharmstandard, one of Russia's largest pharma companies, the Swedish design firm explained.