Biopol plans Post Falls plant
A Spokane company that produces pollens, dust mites and other raw materials for allergy vaccines will break ground next week on a $30 million facility in Post Falls.
Biopol Laboratories’ 68,000-square-foot building will replace five scattered office and lab sites in Spokane. Eventually, about 50 people will work in the new building, which is scheduled to open in 2009.
The company is owned by ALK-Abello Group, a Danish firm that describes itself as one of the world’s largest producers of allergy vaccines. Pollens from ragweed, grasses and trees grown at Biopol’s 640-acre farm in Plummer, Idaho, are used in vaccines produced at ALK-Abello’s facilities in New York, Spain, Denmark and France.
Ragweed and timothy grass produce sneezes and watery eyes on both sides of the Atlantic, said Miles Guralnick, Biopol’s president.
“Some of the major allergens are in fact quite cosmopolitan,” he said. “You’ll find them all over the world.”
Biopol processes about 700 different allergy agents — mainly from plant pollens, but also from dust mites, cat hair and food. A related firm, Vespa Laboratories, specializes in venom proteins from insect stings at its Pennsylvania plant.
The firms are “friendly competitors” of HollisterStier Laboratories in Spokane, which also has an allergy treatment line, Guralnick said.
About 29 people work at Biopol, a figure that will grow over the next several years, Guralnick said. ALK-Abello bought 12 ½ acres so the building could expand in the future. About six of Biopol’s employees work in research and development.
“We are excited to add jobs that are in the biotech field,” said Steve Griffitts, president of Jobs Plus, Kootenai County’s nonprofit economic development corporation.
He’s hoping that Biopol’s affiliation with ALK-Abello will help attract other biotech firms to Post Falls.
The industry’s high-paying wages and educated workforce are attractive to job recruiters, but biotech firms tend to cluster around each other, Griffitts said.
ALK-Abello has such a large share of the U.S. and European vaccine markets, Guralnick said, that a patient getting allergy shots in Spokane could be receiving pollens grown in Plummer.
The company’s next push, however, is a pill to replace the needle. “There are no licensed oral vaccines in the United States, but there are in Europe,” Guralnick said.
ALK-Abello is working with a U.S. partner, Schering-Plough, to develop an oral vaccine for ragweed pollen. The development of oral vaccines will lead to future expansions at Biopol’s Post Falls facility, Guralnick said.