Scientific Protein Laboratories is a bio-pharmaceutical company established in Waunakee, Wisconsin in 1976 by Oscar Mayer.[1][2]
In 2004 SPL was acquired by Arsenal Capital Partners for $81 million, today.[3] In 2014 it was acquired by the Chinese company Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical.[2] The company was involved in, along with other pharmaceutical companies, the 2008 Chinese heparin adulteration.[1][4]
A month earlier and half a world away, a team of quality-control specialists from Baxter International, the big multinational health-care company (2007 sales: $11.26 billion) based in Deerfield, Ill., arrived in Zhejiang province, China, about two hours by car from Shanghai, to inspect a facility owned by one of its key suppliers. CZ-SPL is a joint venture controlled by Scientific Protein Laboratories LLC (SPL), a Waunakee, Wis., company started in 1976 by Oscar Mayer, of hot-dog fame. (The connection: pigs naturally produce proteins used in pharmaceuticals.) CZ-SPL makes a key ingredient, what in the pharmaceutical business is called an active pharmaceutical ingredient, or API, for a drug called heparin, a blood thinner that is widely used by kidney-dialysis and postsurgical patients to prevent blood clots. The team found little unusual and gave the facility a clean bill of health.
Scientific Protein Laboratories, of Waunakee, Wisc., and its Changzhou SPL plant in Changzhou City, China, is Baxter's main supplier of the active pharmaceutical ingredient in heparin, Woodcock said