Boom time for Danish sperm bank

One business that is booming in this period of global economic recession is Denmark’s Cryos, the world’s largest sperm bank. Cryos is busy opening new offices across the globe and handling a record number of donors, yet it is still struggling to meet the demand of customers.

Channel News Asia reports that just two years ago the boss of Cryos was prepared to shut its doors or move its business abroad due to a proposed Danish tax law that would have required sperm donors to declare the income from their ‘donation’ on their annual tax returns.

This would have put their anonymity at risk, a major focal point in the business of donating sperm and eggs. But when Denmark’s taxation team realised this would kill the entire business of Cryos they backed off.

By 2008, the number of donors at Cryos had tripled to around 100 each day at its four clinics in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, and Aalborg. The number of men applying to be donors has also rising sharply, from 350 to more than 1,000. As a result, Cryos has doubled its staff, moved its headquarters into a posh new office building, and raked in revenues of EUR 3 million in 2008.

Donors get paid EUR 80 for “very good quality” sperm. Each year, Cryos exports 85 percent of the 20,000 sperm donations to some 400 fertility clinics in 60 countries. Yet even with the leap in altruistic Danish male donors willing to do their part to help the human population, Cryos can’t fill the demand, which seems to be on a steady climb.