The unravelling of CSL
The company is undisputed king of the blood products jungle no longer.
In 2024, Swiss pharmaceuticals billionaire Wolfgang Marguerre decided he was sick and tired of being an also-ran in the UK market for intravenous immunoglobulin, a key blood plasma-based therapy used to treat post-operative patients and a wide variety of chronic illnesses.
Maguerre's privately-owned company, Octapharma, had long played second fiddle to Australian blood products company CSL, and he wanted to own a bigger share of the IVIG supply deals with Britain's National Health Service.
When the NHS announced a tender for new IVIG supply contracts for the period from April 2025 to December 2027 – with an option to extend – Marguerre decided to offer an IVIG supply price that would blow CSL out of the water.
When the NHS announced the winners of the 2025-27 tender, Octapharma had replaced CSL's role as the preferred IVIG supplier to the UK's vast network of government hospitals. CSL's key IVIG products – Privigen and Hizentra – were dumped from the NHS preferred supplier framework. The NHS reportedly saved many tens of millions of pounds from the switch.
CSL's UK business was gutted. It had been beaten by a company one tenth of its size.[[CSL has not revealed the size of the UK contract revenue loss. Broker analysts have estimated the revenue lost at between US$180 million and US$240 million.]]
The shock waves from the loss of the cornerstone NHS contract – and others in Mexico and the Middle East – keep reverberating, but like the waves of a tsunami that only increase in intensity.
