Laboratorios Farmacéuticos ROVI, S.A. (ROVI or the “Company”), Càrniques Celrà, S.L. and Grupo Empresarial Costa, S.L. present Glicopepton Biotech, S. L., a joint venture that involves the creation of one of the first national structures for self-sufficiency in heparins and products of high nutritional value to be used in the composition of animal feed and fertilisers. The goals of this project focus on transforming the present livestock production process into a high-value-added technological process based on a circular economy model.
The project involves the construction of a facility at the Industrial Logistics Platform of Fraga (Huesca), which will produce compounds of high biological value that derive from the intestinal mucosa of pigs. It will involve a joint investment of approximately 40 million euros over the next four years and is expected to create around 30 direct skilled jobs. The project will be subject to obtaining the applicable administrative and regulatory permits and authorisations.
Glicopepton Biotech combines ROVI’s experience as a leading company in the research into low-molecular-weight heparins (LMWH) with the track records of Càrniques Celrà and Grupo Empresarial Costa, two major companies in the livestock and meat industry in Spain. LMWHs are anticoagulant drugs used to prevent and treat venous thromboembolic disease. They are a biological product whose raw material is obtained from the intestinal mucosa of pigs. This project seeks both the creation of economic and technological value, transforming pig mucosa into a high-value-added product like heparin, and the development of new animal food supplements and fertilisers.
ROVI has in-house production capacity to transform raw heparin into sodium heparin and intends to expand this capacity through the construction of a new sodium heparin production line (already underway), in order to be present in all the manufacturing phases of low-molecular-weight heparins.
Juan López-Belmonte Encina, ROVI’s chairman and chief executive officer, highlighted “the strategic importance for Spain of a project with these characteristics, since it provides the country with the capacity to be self-sufficient in obtaining a raw material that is indispensable for the production of an essential medicine like low-molecular-weight heparins. At ROVI, we are very excited about this project since, as a company specialised in these medicines, it will enable us to take a further step in the vertical integration of our LMWH manufacturing.”