Biotest Brand Guidelines: A 1946 Frankfurt Serum Institute, Now in Dreieich and Grifols-Owned

A blood-group serum laboratory in post-war Frankfurt.

Biotest was founded in 1946 in Frankfurt am Main as the Biotest Serum-Institut GmbH, the date and name the company gives on its own website. German Wikipedia names the founders as Carl Adolf Schleussner and his son Hans Schleussner, and says the early research centred on blood-group serology, building on the work of Karl Landsteiner. Its first product, the same source says, was an anti-D test serum for determining the Rhesus factor.

Medicines for treatment followed from 1949, German Wikipedia says, beginning with the plasma-protein preparation Biseko, which still appears in the company’s intensive-care range. The company became a stock corporation, Biotest AG, in 1986 and listed its ordinary and preference shares on the Frankfurt stock exchange in 1987; from 2007 to September 2018 the preference shares were part of the SDAX index.

The early 1990s brought scrutiny. In its final report of October 1994, the German Bundestag’s committee of inquiry into HIV infections through blood and blood products recorded that Biotest’s PPSB clotting concentrate, approved in 1976, was treated with a “cold sterilisation” process — beta-propiolactone followed by ultraviolet light — and that in 1990 HIV infections occurred after the use of one batch of that concentrate; the company then applied for the product’s licence to be suspended. German Wikipedia adds that Biotest withdrew the preparation worldwide at the end of April 1990, and that the legal aftermath lasted for years.

Immunoglobulins, clotting factors and albumin.

Biotest describes itself as a maker of biological medicines from human plasma, used mainly in clinical immunology, haematology and intensive care. Its main product groups, it says, are immunoglobulins, clotting factors and albumin; named ranges on its website include the immunoglobulins Intratect and Yimmugo, the albumin Albiomin and the factor VIII preparation Haemoctin. German Wikipedia notes a particular focus on hyperimmunoglobulins, and says Biotest received US approval for its first immunoglobulin for the American market, Bivigam, at the end of 2012.

The company narrowed its business over time. In January 2010, German Wikipedia says, it sold its transfusion- and transplant-diagnostics reagents and instruments to Bio-Rad, and in 2011 its microbiological-monitoring business to Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, a sale that took effect in August that year.

Research has centred on plasma proteins, with monoclonal antibodies developed alongside partners, German Wikipedia says. It records that in 2013 Biotest began a phase III study of Civacir, a hyperimmunoglobulin studied against hepatitis C reinfection after liver transplantation, and in 2014 a clinical study of the monoclonal antibody indatuximab ravtansine, known as BT-062, in patients with solid tumours. The same source gives Germany and the other member states of the European Union as the company’s core markets, alongside a presence in Asian markets.

Production is concentrated at Dreieich, near Frankfurt, where the company has its headquarters. Biotest says it processes, together with contract partners, up to 1.5 million litres of plasma a year, and that its “Biotest Next Level” investment project has doubled its capacity at Dreieich to up to 3 million litres, with the new plant being ramped up step by step until 2026. Construction began in 2014, according to German Wikipedia.

Plasma comes from the company’s own collection centres in Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic, run under names including Plasma Service Europe and Cara Plasma, and Biotest has its own subsidiaries in Austria, Switzerland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. It says its products are sold in more than 70 countries.

Plasma, law and public health.

Plasma companies sell medicines that most people never see on a shelf, so their public image is built around the people at either end of the chain. Websites, annual reports and recruitment pages for the sector tend to open on donors: someone relaxing in a reclining chair in a bright, clean collection centre, a nurse at their side, with the equipment kept small in the frame. The tone is calm and grateful rather than clinical.

The middle of the chain is shown through hands and buildings. Close-ups of gloved hands holding vials, labelled blood bags and racks of tubes signal laboratory care without showing a face, while aerial photographs of large fractionation plants, steel tanks and clean-room corridors stand for scale. Collection-device makers add their own register of machines, tubing sets and touchscreens, usually photographed on white.

At the far end are patients. Several of the conditions these medicines are used for are rare, and the companies’ storytelling often leans on named families, children and long-term patients, often filmed at home or outdoors, alongside patient-organisation partnerships and awareness days. Scientific credibility is carried by medical congresses such as those of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH) and the American Society of Hematology (ASH), and by industry meetings such as the Plasma Protein Forum.

The visual identities themselves are mostly quiet: corporate sans-serif wordmarks, generous white space and restrained palettes, with brand colour used sparingly against photography. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and where it says its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Two owners in a decade, and a new legal form.

Ownership changed twice in a few years. German Wikipedia says the Chinese investor Creat Group took over Biotest in January 2018, and that to obtain government approvals Biotest sold its US business. Creat put the company up for sale in spring 2021, and in November 2021 Biotest’s management and supervisory boards recommended acceptance of a takeover offer from the Spanish plasma group Grifols. On 25 April 2022 Grifols announced it had completed the purchase of Tiancheng (Germany) Pharmaceutical Holdings, the holding company that owned about 90 per cent of Biotest’s ordinary shares, and that together with its public offer it controlled 96.20 per cent of the voting rights.

The legal form changed in 2026. An extraordinary general meeting on 17 December 2025 approved converting Biotest AG into a partnership limited by shares, German Wikipedia says, and the change took effect when it was entered in the commercial register on 15 April 2026; the company now trades as Biotest GmbH & Co. KGaA, with Biotest Management GmbH joining as its general partner. Its website says the change affects only the legal form and that the company’s legal identity is unchanged. It employs more than 2,800 people, most of them in Germany, the company says.

For a design guide, Biotest shows how a post-war serum laboratory’s name survived a stock-market listing, two changes of owner and a new legal form. Compare Grifols, its owner since 2022, and Fresenius, another healthcare group from the Frankfurt area. For this guide we use a deep navy, a clear blue and a pale grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Biotest’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.