Trelleborg Presents its Focus on Healthcare & Medical at Pharmapack
At Pharmapack, Trelleborg Healthcare & Medical exhibits its advanced polymer solutions for healthcare and medical applications. On February 5 and 6, 2020, in Hall 7.2 on Stand G72, Trelleborg will demonstrate how it helps pharmaceutical and medical device companies improve patient quality of life by forming lasting partnerships with customers to develop innovative, reliable engineered polymer solutions for demanding medical, biotech and pharmaceutical applications.
Partnering with customers to best meet their needs
For over 20 years, Trelleborg has been developing and supplying silicone tubing, film and custom molded components, as well as elastomer and polymer seals, to manufacturers for their biotech and pharmaceutical equipment, as well as medical devices. Trelleborg Healthcare & Medical brings together all its global sales, development, design and manufacturing facilities to better meet its customers’ needs.
Linda Muroski, Global President, Trelleborg Healthcare & Medical, says, "We are focusing our global expertise in healthcare and medical to provide our customers the industry-specific solutions they require. Creating a healthcare & medical operation strengthens our ability to respond even faster to customers’ requests, whether they be for new innovations, expanded capabilities or potential geographical expansion.
“We partner with customers from the initial design phase through prototyping and commercialization, utilizing our engineering and material expertise and global portfolio of manufacturing capabilities to meet customer needs at every stage of development. This accelerates time to market for new medical devices. And to ensure those medical devices and services meet customer and regulatory requirements, all of our healthcare and medical facilities conform to ISO 13485-2016.
Custom silicone components
“Trelleborg manufacturing facilities specialize in producing custom silicone and thermoplastic components, including micro-molded parts, parts with complex geometries and multi-component parts. Our in-house tool rooms develop high precision Liquid Silicone Rubber (LSR) tooling combined with advanced automation technologies to support production volumes ranging from prototype to high-volume serial production.”
Andreas Schmiedel, Technical Manager Healthcare & Medical Europe, adds: “For example, as specialists in healthcare & medical, we closely monitor changes in the regulatory environment, such as the new EU Regulation on Medical Devices 2017/745 (MDR) and revised ISO-10993. We are capable of proactively developing and recommending solutions to support our customers in meeting stringent requirements. One of our goals, through partnership, is to bring our customers’ solutions to market faster.”
At Pharmapack, Trelleborg will exhibit its patented GeoTransTM technology, which enables a significantly greater variation in the geometry of tubing, supporting unique customer specific designs. For example, one lumen can be separated into two lumen (or two into one) during the extrusion process, eliminating the need for a molded component between the different segments. Additionally, lumen can be stopped and restarted or the dimensions of the tubing can be changed, which is often necessary for wound drains. Reducing the process steps in manufacturing saves time and decreases potential sources of failure, thereby reducing costs and mitigating risk.
Drug-eluting combination products
Also on show at Pharmapack, are Trelleborg’s silicone sheeting and film capabilities. For example, Trelleborg has, in partnership with a customer, developed drug-eluting silicone film, which can be used to treat chronic wounds and burns. There is increasing demand for flexible, breathable wound dressings that minimize scarring, reduce the risk of infection and accelerate healing.
"Depending on the medical application, wafer-thin silicone gel films containing active pharmaceutical ingredients are being increasingly used in place of more traditional burn and wound care treatments," continues Schmiedel. "The silicone film can be combined with antibiotics or decongestants, which can potentially replace epidermally applied medication. These drug-eluting silicone films significantly improve treatment for patients."
Trelleborg experts will be on stand G72 in hall 7.2 at Pharmapack in Paris, France, February 5 and 6 to discuss its advanced polymer solutions for healthcare and medical applications.
On Thursday, 6 February at 11am, Andreas Schmiedel will be presenting a technical paper, “Products and Processes for Life-Changing Technologies”, at Pharmapack that will focus on mixing of APIs with silicone.