Medical Unirea Centre and Hygeia Group opened the first stem cell bank with storage facility in Romania, Stem-Health Unirea, following a 2 million euro investment.
The company expects the project to return a turnover of 1.5 million euros this year, and revenues to double in 2010.
Stem-Health Unirea is the sole stem cell bank with exclusive storage facility in Romania. The bank will have the capacity to store up to 6,000 units of blood from the umbilical cord, following to extend it to 10,000 units by year-end.
Stem-Health Unirea bank is thus entering a market estimated at 3,000 units in 2007, 4,000-4,500 in 2008, with huge growth potential for this year, when it would most likely hike to a staggering 12,000 units.
The company aims at taking a 21% market share in its first year of operation, and to climbing gradually to 40% until 2012.
Stem-Health takes the technology, work protocols as well as the processing and storing procedures from New England Cord Blood Bank in Boston, via Stem-Health from Greece. Staff training, processing lab and 20-year storage of stem cells requires 1 billion euro investment, while the costs incurred by technology transfer will reach 750,000 euros. Another few hundred thousand euros will go into the state-of-the-art equipment in the years to come.
Stem-Health Bank Unirea is fully operational as of early May, with already 100 pre-contracts for the collection of stem cells and already tens units stored at this point. By year-end, the representatives of the company expect the storage facility to house around 1,500 units.
