PAA Laboratories GmbH is the legal successor of a small, venture capital financed cell culture lab located in Austria’s first technology centre in Linz. The company in its currently existing form was founded in February 1988 by Mr. Rainer C. Burian who serves as PAA’s CEO from this time. Responsible investment manager was Mr. Andreas Mladek who – after a successful management buyout of his fund – joined PAA Laboratories as managing partner and CFO in 1992. | 1988 |
Also in 1992 Mr. Harry Brack, at that time a young sales rep of Gibco Life Technologies Germany, was hired and put in charge of winding up PAA’s subsidiary in Germany. In the same year PAA UK were founded. | 1992 |
In 1997 a research unit was founded in Munich in order to further pursue PAA’s UV-C virus inactivation technology by optimizing the process and constructing the world’s first computerized and patented machine to inactivate viruses and mycoplasma in serum. Dr. Rainer Waldmann, PAA’s long-term Technical Director and today President of the Australian operation, joined in this year. | 1997 |
In 2000 PAA France was set up in Les Mureaux, a suburb of Paris. | 2000 |
In 2001 it was decided to build a new production plant in Austria in order to meet the requirements of the strongly growing volumes of sera and media produced. An existing, suitable factory was purchased and converted into a high-tech GMP pharmaceutical production plant; the most modern of its kind in Europe at the moment. The investment totalled app. US$ 15 million. | 2001 |
On October 31, 2003 the new manufacturing plant was inaugurated under the presence of several hundred invited guests. The year was highlighted by two company prizes which were won by PAA: Against 450 competitors PAA won the “Austrian’s Leading Mid-Sized Company” prize (ALC) being the most successful company in terms of three years growth of sales and cash flow. Upper Austrian’s “Golden Pegasus” Prize of the same year underlined the company’s successful development. | 2003 |
In 2005 PAA has become a genuine global player. With the acquisition of Cansera, Toronto and Serum Ventures, Australia the company distributes its range of products to the most distant points of sales worldwide. PAA has become one of only three vertically integrated companies with own raw material collections and GMP processing facilities on three different continents. Industrial buyers can subsequently get high quality final filtered products directly from the country where the pertinent raw material was collected. As the first company in the cell culture reagents business PAA Austria was granted a GMP pharmaceutical manufacturing license. Under this license PAA will manufacture a few products for “in-vivo cell culture use” on highest quality standard. | 2005 |
A new sophisticated and user-friendly website came on stream in Summer of this year. Also in Summer 2006 PAA USA was founded in order to meet the challenges of the largest single market of the world. Located in the Greater Boston area products will be shipped to industrial and research customers all over the country. | 2006 |
