Medical Polymers In India: Technological Developments And
Growth Pattern
Growth To Accelerate In Coming Years
Mr. Kamal Kurra
Sales Manager - India
Rehau Polymers Pvt. Ltd., Pune.
.. |
Mr.
Kurra has an extensive experience of more than 21
years in Marketing & Sales with the last 7 years being
head of Sales for India/South Asia (SA) with RAUMEDIC
AG. Under his current role, he has set-up the sales
office for RAUMEDIC AG in India & has launched the
company in India/SA. He is responsible for building up
of business strategy, sales development, key account
management and liaison with customers for new projects
& developments. Mr. Kurra holds a Management
certification from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of
Management Studies and has worked with Glaxo Smith
Kline & Sigma-Aldrich. He has attended various courses
& training programmes in India and abroad such as -
Glaxo Excellence Process for “Total Quality
Management” & Sales IQ training “From Good to Great”
by Mercuri International. During the tenure of his
career, he has been responsible for sales, budgeting,
credit control, inventory management, ensuring plant
capacity utilization, development of people,
identifying and developing distributors, attending &
organizing trade shows/seminars, meeting the profit &
growth objectives of the company & doing market
research for new launches. |
The growth of consumption
for medical polymers in India.
The growth trajectory of
consumption for Medical Polymers in India is going to
accelerate in the coming years. The rate of growth shall
largely depend on various factors such as Government
policies towards changes in packaging applications (like
replacement of Glass IV bottles by flexible nonPVC bags),
new legislations on Medical Devices, favourable polices
such as “Make in India” which promote India as a hub for
manufacturing of medical devices for global & local
markets. It is needless to mention that the products
should be as per international standards and comply with
global regulations.
The specific product
areas where polymers being supplied by the company have
substituted conventional materials for medical
applications.
A typical area in which
classical materials are in a process of replacement by
polymer materials is the packaging segment. Decades ago
there was no other material than glass used for IV
containers or blood collection systems. Today a huge
portion of this market has moved towards flexible and
un-breakable containers made of polymers, such as blood
bags, IV-bags or PE bottle packs. We supply co-extruded
filling tubes “RFT” to the manufacturers of such
autoclavable IV-bags. With that respect, medical and
pharmaceutical companies just followed the trend of the
food packaging industries. A similar move towards products
made of polymers today instead of glass in the past, are
syringes. Today they are made in huge quantities of
polyolefins, PE or PP, for safety reasons but also in
order to reduce costs for the health care organizations.
Effect of Improving
Regulations on the global medical device industry. The
regulations and compliance criteria met by Polymers
Supplied by The Company.
The medical and
pharmaceutical market is one of the most regulated markets
in the world. This reflects the high requirements in the
quality of products, that support the health conditions of
patients in medical care situations. The highest standards
today are set by the United States (e.g. FDA 21 CfR) and
the European Community (e.g. European Pharmacopeia). These
standards specify in detail the ingredients and the purity
of plastic materials used in medical and pharmaceutical
applications. There are also many global standards like
ISO 13485 for the quality managements of manufacturers of
medical devices, ISO 14644 for the required clean-room
set-up, or additional ISO standards for the validation of
sterilization processes. Other countries like India, China
and Brazil are catching up with the current quality
standards, as the safety of patients is regarded as a high
value in these countries, too.
Polymers for Packaging
Applications.
For packaging applications
the MedTec industries follow the trend of the food
packaging industries. Because of the enormous amounts of
sterile, single-use disposable containers only low costs
polymers are used in such applications. These include
typical Polyolefins, e.g. HDPE, LDPE and PP Homo- and
Copolymers. For specific applications it is required to
modify these polymers with elastomers, e.g. SEBS, in order
to increase the flexibility and clarity of the film
materials, tubes or bottles. Good examples for such
products are bottle packs made of HDPE or collapsible
IV-bags made of multi-layer PP film materials.
New developments in the
polymers supplied by the company.
Polymer materials provide a
wide range of physical, chemical and physiological
properties that allow their use in many medical
applications. However, in specific requirements it becomes
obvious that one polymer alone will not meet with all
requirements on the product. For such applications a
combination of 2 or 3 polymers very often provide the
perfect solution. Therefore we have focused on the
simultaneous processing of different polymers in both,
extrusion as well as in injection molding machines. With
our extrusion expertise we can produce 2- or 3-layer tubes
in a variety of different polymers, from standard plastics
to engineering plastics, but also high-performance
polymers. The applications include catheters tubing in
very small dimensions, but also other larger bore
coextruded tubing for IV-lines or IV bag filling tubes.
Similar process technologies have been developed in terms
of co-molding, where combinations of different polymers,
e.g. hard / soft combinations, allow the design and
development of completely new medical devices.
Page
1 :
2 :
3 :
4 :
5 :
6 :
7 :
8 :
9 :
10 |