SK Plasma said Wednesday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding worth $330 million with Egypt’s state-run pharmaceutical company ACDIMA.

Under the memorandum, SK Plasma will now contract manufacture plasma-derived medical products using 1 million liters of Egyptian plasma at its facility in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, which has an annual capacity of 600,000 liters.

It will also transfer plasma fractionation technology to ACDIMA and construct a plasma fractionation plant in Egypt.

SK Engineering and Construction has been tasked to build the facility, while the exact location and timeline will be decided later when the actual contract is signed.

At the signing between the heads of both companies at the Egyptian Embassy in Korea, Ambassador Hazem Fahmy was present to acknowledge the importance of essential medicines.

PDMPs are nationally designated essential medicines used to treat congenital immune deficiencies, hemophilia and burns.

However, due to technological complexity and the difficulty in acquiring stable supply of healthy blood as raw material, there are only some 30 PDMP companies across the world.

Egypt, as the biggest country in the Middle East, has been completely dependent on imports for PDMPs.

At the memorandum signing ceremony, ACDIMA Director Olfat Ghorab said she looks forward to the future when Egypt will become self-sufficient in PDMP manufacturing.

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)