ALK-Abell Source Materials Inc., the allergen supplier that includes the former Biopol Laboratories Inc. operation here, says its gearing up for a significant increase in demand for the raw materials it produces as its Danish parent rolls out a new allergy medication line.


The company was formed in January when Biopol was merged with Pennsylvania-based Vespa Laboratories Inc., which had owned the Spokane company since 1999 and is a unit of Danish pharmaceutical giant ALK- Abell Group. The newly merged ALK- Abell subsidiary is based in Spring Mills, Pa., but continues to have significant operations here.


Those operations are slated to grow significantly in coming years. The company currently is constructing a $32 million, 85,000-square-foot plant in Post Falls into which it plans early next year to consolidate operations currently scattered around the area.


It also expects to boost its current employment here to 50, from 35 now, by the end of next year, and envisions a work force of 80 people by the following year. Currently, it has open positions for scientists, engineers, and technicians.


In the 19 months since it first announced its building project here, the company has twice increased the size of the planned facility, which now is expected to be nearly twice the size of what was originally planned.


The name of the game for us is capacity, capacity, capacity, says Miles Guralnick, the companys Pennsylvania-based president.


Were not talking grams or kilograms anymore, he says, adding that the companys products now are measured in metric tons, meaning it must continually find ways to increase cultivation and propagation of allergen-related crops, and to develop scalable processes. Its a moving target, he says.


Essentially, ALK-Abell Source Materials produces about everything that can make you wheeze and sneeze, Guralnick says.


The company grows about 20 different crops herefrom timothy hay to weeds to treeson agricultural land in the area, and extracts allergens from those crops for use in allergy medicines. It also makes, buys, or collects other allergen raw materials, including cat hair, dust mites, foods, molds, and pollens, he says.


In all, the operations here produce materials for drug therapies aimed at about 700 known allergens. Meanwhile, its Pennsylvania operation, now known as the Spring Mills division, focuses on collecting insect venoms, including from the stingers of bees, hornets, and wasps, Guralnick says.


If (Spring Mills) is one little piece of the pie, then Spokane produces all the rest, he says.


Demand for those materials, which it sells to its parent, ALK-Abell Group, are expected to grow sharply as the Danish company makes market inroads with its new line of under-the-tongue allergy tablets that it introduced last year in Europe, Guralnick says.


Meanwhile, the allergy drug industry itself is growing, fueling more demand for allergen raw materials, he says.


Though he declines to disclose the companys revenues, Guralnick says its growth trajectory is sharp. It seems to get steeper as the months go forward, he says.


Guralnick says the January merger will help the company handle expected growth more easily because combining two companies into one has created administrative efficiencies.


Other efficiencies will come as the company consolidates its non-farming operations here into the new building in Post Falls, where it also will have the room it needs to add staff and increase capacity, he says.


The new facility is located on a 12.5-acre site in the Riverbend Commerce Park, and that amount of land provides the company with room for further expansion later, Guralnick says.


Its non-farm operations currently are located in three leased buildings and in temporary offices it has erected on two vacant lots it owns in Spokane. All of those buildings are located on the East 300 block of Pacific Avenue in Spokane, he says.


The company also leases 7,000 square feet of space in the Sirti Building, east of downtown, where its product development team is based.


For its growing operations, it owns a 680-acre farm near Plummer, Idaho, and leases about 300 acres of farmland elsewhere in Washington and Idaho, Guralnick says.


The Plummer farmland is harvested largely by contract farmers. ALK-Abell Source Materials owns farming equipment there, including four large tractors, and recently has built two buildings with a total of 9,000 square feet of space at that farm for collection and storage of plant pollen.


The new buildings will replace three buildings it leases in Mica, Wash., south of Spokane, he says.


Guralnick says the company intentionally has spread out its farm land geographically to reduce the risk of losing all of its crops at one time due to weather or plant diseases. It also sends teams out to collect allergens in other areas, even as far away as New Zealand.


All of the allergens it produces or collects are sold to ALK-Abell Group, which uses them to produce allergy medications at its production facilities in New York, Spain, France, and Denmark, he says.


Guralnick says the merging of Biopol and Vespa has been seamless. He already was president of both companies and says most of Biopols financial and reporting functions already were being handled out of the Spring Mills office.


Guralnick says much of the companys anticipated growth here is because the medical delivery of allergy treatment is changing.


About a decade ago, ALK-Abell started producing allergy treatments for a number of common allergenswhich previously were delivered exclusively by periodic shotsin a liquid form that could be administered under a patients tongue.


Last year, ALK-Abell released the first in a line of quick-dissolving under-the-tongue daily tablets it has been developing based on that same technology.


That new entry, a grass allergy therapy called Grazax, now is registered in 27 countries in the European Union, and the company currently is developing similar products for other allergens, including ragweed, mite, and birch allergies, Guralnick says. The company is seeking U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of the tablets in the U.S. in collaboration with Kenilworth, N.J.-based pharmaceutical maker Schering-Plough Corp., though it may be some time yet before those products are available here, he says.


Guralnick says the under-the-tongue liquid and tablets are proving to be very effective and to produce fewer allergic reactions than the conventional injection therapy.


The newer therapies, however, dont transmit as much of the allergen into a persons system, so they must include a higher concentration of the allergenbetween 10 and 100 times as much as whats in an injectionto be effective, he says.


Contact Jeanne Gustafson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at [email protected].