Spanish drugmaker Grifols announced a comprehensive plan Wednesday to improve its efficiency and cost-effectiveness – a move that will reportedly cost some 2,000 U.S. jobs.
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Spanish drugmaker Grifols announced a comprehensive plan Wednesday to improve its efficiency and cost-effectiveness – a move that will reportedly cost some 2,000 U.S. jobs.
Through the job cuts and other cost-saving measures, Grifols aims to save approximately $428 million USD in 2023, relative to comparative full-year 2022 costs, according to the Wednesday afternoon press release.
The company will launch this realignment initiative in the first quarter of this year but expects to complete its implementation in the final quarters. Most of the cost savings will be recognized in 2024 financial reports, Grifols announced.
In a statement, Steven Mayer, executive chairperson, Grifols, said these strategic efforts come after an in-depth review of the company’s business. These changes will help Grifols not only to improve its financial performance, but also allow the company to become nimbler and more responsive in a “fast-changing environment,” he said.
Grifols’ operational improvement plan involves three phases. The first seeks to optimize its plasma procurement operation by maintaining high plasma levels but reducing its per-liter cost. This phase includes closing underperforming donor centers and digitizing on-site processes for those that will remain open.
The U.S. job cuts fall under this phase. Grifols expects to incur a one-time expense of approximately $150 million, mostly in severance payments and advisory fees.
The operational improvement plan will also streamline Grifols’ corporate functions by centralizing and automating functions and removing duplicate posts, and enhance other efficiencies throughout the company, particularly in terms of procurement, logistics and facilities, according to the press release.
Other Plasma Players Prosper
While Grifols looks for ways to improve its competitiveness, other pharma companies in the plasma industry seem to be faring quite well.
Earlier this week, Massachusetts-based KalVista Pharmaceuticals reported that the FDA has given regulatory guidance for the oral disintegrating tablet formulation of its investigational plasma kallikrein inhibitor sebetralstat. As per the regulator, no efficacy trials with the formulation will be required for a supplemental New Drug Application filing.
Sebetralstat is being trialed for hereditary angioedema (HAE) in the Phase III KONFIDENT study, for which KalVista has already enrolled more than half of its target sample size.
On Feb. 3, Takeda, one of the largest plasma players, notched an expanded approval for its HAE prophylactic Takhzyro (lanadelumab-flyo).
In recent months, the Japanese multinational licensed a $1 billion colorectal cancer candidate and dropped $4 billion to acquire a Nimbus subsidiary and its oral, selective allosteric tyrosine kinase 2 NDI-034858 for plaque psoriasis.
