Blood management company sets up new plant in Batu Kawan

New facility: An exterior view of the Haemonetics plant in Batu Kawan, Penang.

HAEMONETICS Corporation, a renowned blood management solutions company, will invest RM50mil over two years for its new Penang facility in Batu Kawan, Nibong Tebal.

Its president and chief executive officer Brian Concannon said more than RM100mil had been invested in the facility in Batu Kawan which was the second largest of its facility worldwide.

“We will also grow the workforce to 800 over the next three years from the present 250.

“We will also increase our number of engineers to 40 from 25 over the same period,” he told reporters after the launch of the plant by Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng recently.

The facility, which has a built-up area of 243,000sq ft, houses the company’s warehouse, clean rooms, laboratories and offices among others.

Its capabilities include extrusion, moulding, bag manufacturing, welding, solvent bonding, precision assembly, water treatment, sterile packaging and steam sterilisation, which are the required capabilities for serving the customers’ needs.

Initially the plant will produce 4,500 disposable units daily. This number is expected to grow to 17,500 units per day after the first year.

Concannon said the Asia Pacific region was the fastest growing region among all the markets it serves, backed by the demand from China.

“We need a strong presence to support this growth.

“With our commercial headquarters for Asia Pacific located in Shanghai and our distribution headquarters in Hong Kong, we realised that our manufacturing operations were not as well-positioned to serve the growing number of Asia Pacific customers.

“We selected Penang for the location of the plant because it offers the proximity to serve our customers. Penang is also the base for key component suppliers and medical equipment manufacturers doing business here,” he said.

Headquartered in Massachu-setts, USA, Haemonetic’s integrated devices, information management solutions, and consulting services are used for increasing the efficiency of blood supply chain and improving blood management practices for plasma centres and hospitals.