Investment management firm BlackRock has purchased an Australian blood processing facility and a pharmaceutical lab alongside fund manager Wentworth Capital.

The Red Cross blood processing facility and lab serve as the first seed assets for its $1.5 billion Life Sciences investment platform, Financial Review reported.

Ben Hickey, head of Australian real estate at BlackRock, said the investment management firm believes the “life sciences sector represents a growing opportunity to capitalise on the long-term sectoral tailwinds driven by increased government and infrastructure spend, as well as the existing capability of Australian universities, industry and innovation clusters.”

Hickey described the blood processing facility as a high-quality, strategic asset,” according to the report. The laboratory is currently leased to Israel multinational Teva Pharmaceuticals.

BlackRock announced its life sciences real estate fund in September, with managing director and head of investments at BlackRock Asia Pacific Hamish MacDonald saying at the time, “Life sciences and self storage are sectors that global sophisticated investors want to be in, but they just don’t know how to access them at scale in the Asia Pacific region.”

Many pharmaceutical brands conduct clinical trials in Australia, MacDonald said, explaining the appeal of investing in life sciences.

According to asset company JLL, life sciences investments will likely have “long-term growth.”

“Evaluate Pharma forecasts worldwide pharma sales will be over 80% higher in 2030 than they were in 2023, driven in large part by a doubling of revenue generated by biologics,” JLL wrote.

Life sciences and pharmaceutical investments are occurring globally.

Bloomberg reported earlier this year that the Labour Party planned to increase Britain’s pharmaceutical industry by £10 billion ($12.7 billion) annually.

Global commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield called China “one of the world’s most important biopharmaceutical markets.”