A TECHNO-ECONOMIC NEWS MAGAZINE FOR MEDICAL PLASTICS AND PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY
Our 22nd Year of Publication
Page  7 of 10

Cover Story

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.

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