Australia's CSL tests 'dynamic pricing' of donor blood amid cost surge

By Byron Kaye

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's CSL, the world's largest producer of blood plasma products, is trialling "dynamic pricing" of payments to donors to grow profit margins amid persistently high supply costs, a senior executive said on Tuesday.

CSL, one of Australia's biggest listed companies, makes most of its profit from converting the plasma of donated blood into treatments for rare diseases.

But since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, the company has had to offer higher fees to lure donors, who are primarily in the United States.

"We are … doing further initiatives around dynamic pricing with a new CRM (customer relationship management) tool that's allowing us to really target our donors specifically," CSL Chief Financial Officer Joy Linton told the Macquarie Australia Conference.

The company would "incentivise a donor to come into the centre at certain hours of the day when we know that centre will be a little quieter or disincentivise them from coming in when the centre is busier," she added.

"Over time that will result in further reduction in donor fees."

CSL's overall donor fees were "well off the peaks" of COVID when lockdowns and health concerns kept people at home, but were expected to remain above pre-pandemic levels, Linton said.

(Reporting by Byron Kaye in Sydney; Editing by Jamie Freed)