Creat Said Planning to Sell U.K. Plasma Company to Shanghai RAAS

(Bloomberg) -- China’s Creat Group Corp. plans to inject a U.K.-based maker of blood plasma therapies into publicly traded affiliate Shanghai RAAS Blood Products Co., according to people familiar with the matter.

Privately held Creat agreed in May to buy U.K.-based Bio Products Laboratory Ltd., which specializes in treatments made from blood plasma, for 820 million pounds ($1.1 billion). Shanghai RAAS is China’s biggest health-care company by valuation with a market cap of about $16 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The companies have not set a time frame for the injection of BPL into Shanghai RAAS and the plans are not finalized, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions remain private. Creat through its affiliated companies is one of the two major shareholders of Shanghai RAAS.

Shanghai RAAS is China’s largest seller of plasma-based therapies, or medicines made from blood components that are used during surgeries or for disorders like hemophilia. Gaining control of BPL would give the Chinese company a business that has exports to more than 45 countries and that supplies plasma from the U.S. to other plasma therapy manufacturers.

Creat is planning the transaction for BPL partly to avoid competing with Shanghai RAAS, according to the people familiar with the matter. The completion of Creat’s acquisition of BPL was announced in August.

A Shanghai RAAS representative said he couldn’t immediately comment. Creat Group didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking comment and representatives couldn’t immediately be reached.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Li Hui in Beijing at hli355@bloomberg.net, Steven Yang in Beijing at kyang74@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anjali Cordeiro at acordeiro2@bloomberg.net, Ben Scent

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