"A lot of the disruption that we saw throughout the pandemic, and through the disruption in the chemical industry in general, has driven companies to make [decisions to] mitigate risk of transport," Wessner said.
Another way health care companies are looking to mitigate risk and gain cost efficiency is in material consolidation, she said.
"We learned so much through the challenges of the pandemic," Wessner said. "As companies were forced, especially OEMs, to really dig deep into their value chain, there were a lot of reality checks. … If a company doesn't have good line of sight to what's being used throughout their value chain, when a crisis does hit, their ability to control it is very limited."
Lately, Formerra has helped customers through supply chain disruptions in ABS plastics for medical applications, she said.
Materials supplier Avient Corp. is focused on sustainability in per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance-free solutions, largely driven by the European medical market, Lindsay Machas, health care commercial manager at Avient, told PN at MD&M West.
"Low-retention additives, specifically around non-PFAS, is an emerging area that we're working to address," Machas said. "There's stigma in the industry around PFAS slowly degrading over time, and there's been a response to that from a global standpoint."
Avient developed its Cesa non-PFAS, low-retention additives, which will be available soon, with evolving regulatory requirements in mind, she said.
Intended for use in products like labware and pipette tips and manufactured without intentionally added PFAS-based or fluorinated raw materials, the Cesa additives eliminate the need for secondary low-retention coatings and allow for precise fluid dispensing with "virtually no residual liquid left behind," a Jan. 28 news release said.
The additive, which will be available "both in concentrates as well as green color compounds," Machas said, "can address those needs for improving hydrophobic properties."
Another trend driven by the European market are bio-based alternatives to traditional fossil fuel materials. Avient is pre-testing raw, bio-based materials across a variety of biocompatibility regulations to save customers' time and increase their confidence in the products, she said.
"In the medical industry, using recycled content is a challenge, so a bio-based material will help us succeed in promoting [sustainable solutions in the medical market]," said Brad Davison, director of technology for specialty engineered materials at Avient. "Our main focus is using bio-based resins and materials to formulate our products.
"Many of our large customers are global," Davison said. "They are asking for the same material in all … regions. It's very challenging in the health care space. These materials have to go through regulatory. Sometimes the raw materials you get here in North America might be a little different Europe or in Asia. … Any raw material processing, those types of things are very heavily controlled in our business. In many cases, we need customer authorization to make that change. Once a health care product ... goes out the door, it cannot be changed for any reason."
Customers work with Avient's industrial designers, located in St. Louis, to design components "all the way up through complete design of a medical device," Davison added.
"There's a lot of collaboration … with so many things changing and evolving with regulatory," Machas said. "We have [an] open conversation understanding the formulation itself, what it's going into, what that liability and risk is, and working with that change control standpoint so we can lock our formulas essentially all the way down to the raw materials themselves.
"When or if a change comes from the supplier, we are then notifying [customers] to help manage expectations and navigate some of those complexities [and] come with alternatives," she added.
Localization is also an important part of Avient's strategy to meet customers' needs, Machas said, as materials can be specificized in the U.S. and then produced in any of its locations in Canada, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa or Latin America.
"From a shipping standpoint, carbon footprint emissions, [localization] really helps to minimize that impact," she said.
Materials and medical components supplier TekniPlex has grown its contract manufacturing portfolio with interventional device solutions and implantables among other products as it continues verticalizing its services, Melissa Green, head of global marketing at TekniPlex, told PN.
"Material science is our base, and that's starting in our compounds," Green said. "We have some new [bio-based PVC] compounds that we've just brought to market. These components of the plasticizers, and the PVC itself, incorporates clean energy."
"We have a number of packaging materials, different substrates, different films, different adhesives, and supporting processing aids and other things that help our material get converted in the manufacturing process that historically may have some PFAS in it," Oscar Martin, senior vice president at TekniPlex Inc., told PN.
"Through the help of our customers and a pretty extensive body of work with our suppliers and raw material partners, as well as our internal process engineers, we have reduced the amount of PFAS significantly through raw material substitutions, through changes in our processes, through simplification of our recipes, to the point where we're well compliant with the regulations and corporate requirements to eliminate them.
"In some cases, particularly fluorinated films, those are some really technical product requirements, performance requirements," Martin said. "They're materials that provide chemical resistance, inertness, durability. TekniPlex was first or second to market to find alternatives that still are functional in application, that work for our customers.
"We're working with our customers to develop [other] material substitutions," he added, such as polystyrene.
"We're redesigning our products to be monomaterial," Martin added. "Something that's multimaterial would normally go to a landfill. And so combining the material in such a manner that matches the other packaged components … when the consumer has fully used the product, it's curbside-ready for recyclability."
Although sustainability is a trend in the health care market, suppliers are still in early stages of understanding what replacements are both better for the environment and for patients to receive adequate treatment.
"In the health care industry, we need to be risk-adverse," she said. "The industry is still trying to figure out what makes sense and what it can do that isn't going to bring increased risk to patients. Things like the bio-based PVC allow customers to start to have more sustainable offerings … without kind of increasing risk. That's something that is strong in our customers' minds and they're coming to us for solutions."
Avient's health care customers have also indicated a need for nearshoring amid a "volatile [supply chain] environment," Green said. "We have plants around the globe that give our customers options, depending on what their location is. We have multiple plants that we can supply things from different parts of the globe."
