Octapharma News September 20th, 2004

September 20th, 2004

Octapharma Wins 5th Consecutive Norwegian Tender

After a lengthy and exciting tender process, it is with pleasure that Octapharma can announce that Helse Øst (the group responsible for the Norwegian Self-Sufficiency Project) has signed an agreement, valid as of 1^st of July 2004, covering a three years period during which Octapharma will manufacture multiple plasma derivatives from all the plasma collected by the Norwegian blood centres. The agreement also covers all Norwegian transfusion plasma which will be virus inactivated by Octapharma and returned to Norway.

The contract ensures a continuation of a collaboration which started as early as April 1988. During the last sixteen years, Octapharma has fractionated a total of 800,000 litres of Norwegian plasma into life-saving products such as Factor VIII and Factor IX for the treatment of haemophilia, intravenous immunoglobulin (liquid) for the treatment of immune diseases and several other products.

It is with great pleasure that Octapharma can confirm that years of investment in maintenance and improvement of the plasma product portfolio has resulted in winning the fifth Norwegian tender in a row. The tender focused very much on the key purpose of this important national project, namely self-sufficiency in a wide product portfolio harvested from plasma.