Medical molders are seeing demand and supply chain trends shift again following the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the health care industry and consumers' behavior over the last year.
After Vermont-based GW Plastics Inc.'s medical device production volume was negatively impacted due to elective surgeries being deferred last year, Brenan Riehl, president and CEO, told Plastics News, "hospitals learned how to treat patients safely during the pandemic."
Now, the company has started to see its surgical medical device business rebound.
"We think there's going to be a tremendous amount of pent-up demand for elective patient surgical care in the second half of 2021," Riehl said.
With 90 percent of its business in the health care marketplace, GW expects its diagnostics and drug delivery business, which saw increased demand amid the pandemic, to stay strong.
"We think there's going to be more emphasis going forward placed on diagnostics and drug delivery applications as a result of the pandemic," he said. "COVID-19 is likely to be around in some form or another for the foreseeable future.
"The health care business may not be recession-proof, but it sure is recession-resistant," he said. "But in this case, it was a pandemic, and how do you prepare for that?"