Teknor Apex offers a broad portfolio of materials — including both polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) — to deliver the right solutions for healthcare applications ranging from tubing to moulded components and beyond.
Teknor Apex
Widely known for its customised formulation and product development, Teknor Apex is grounded in a strong industry network and offers proven expertise in regulatory support. “We are committed to being a reliable long-term partner to help medical device manufacturers develop and support life-changing technology across the globe,” says Teknor Apex global healthcare market manager Derek Laffey. “Our focus is always on collaborating closely with customers to develop new applications, and to do so responsibly.”
PVC: A trusted choice in healthcare applications
The century-old company offers a range of polymers for medical device designers, with PVC remaining a popular choice due to its established safety record, performance, and cost-effectiveness. PVC's durability, chemical resistance, and compatibility with various sterilisation methods make it a valuable material in medical device manufacturing.
Despite PVC’s successful history, regulatory changes have driven some manufacturers to seek alternatives. “As a compounder of both vinyl and alternatives like TPE, Teknor Apex offers a range of options and helps guide its customers to select the right one,” says Laffey.
Simple, sustainable PVC
The PVC compounds used to produce medical devices such as IV sets are combinations of PVC resin, plasticisers and a few other minor ingredients. PVC resin is a polymer derived from ethylene and chlorine. Because the chlorine used in the production of PVC comes from one of the most common and abundant materials on earth (salt), medical PVC compounds have inherent sustainability characteristics while using the minimum number of ingredients to achieve remarkable performance and processing stability. PVC is also remarkably well suited for mechanical recycling. Depending on the application and the ratio of reclaimed to virgin pellets, it can remain stable for up to eight passes in a typical injection moulding process. A properly stabilised PVC compound can maintain its structural integrity, colour and performance through multiple rounds of recycling.
Since many flexible PVC compounds contain roughly 50% to 60% PVC resin, Teknor Apex sees huge opportunity for gains in sustainability in medical devices through the efforts of resin producers around the world. “Resin producers have stepped up their game with products made from renewable energy sources, and from inputs derived from bio-repurposed sources,” says Laffey. “These new resins equip us to work in partnership with our customers to innovate new products with more sustainable raw materials.”
Plasticisers play their part
Plasticisers play a key role in sensitive applications such as medical tubing and other device components by imparting the flexibility, durability and elasticity required to resist kinking and other failure modes. Plasticisers are selected for their ability to meet critical application requirements while maintaining biocompatibility and enhancing clarity. Plasticisers are essential to maintaining a medical device’s long-term functionality.
At Teknor Apex, the team is also seeing important sustainability gains in the plasticiser arena. Producers now offer non-phthalate products that contain ISCC-certified recycled content (including content derived from molecular recycling), plus bio-derived inputs. Teknor Apex has leveraged these diverse new offerings to expand its portfolio of sustainable PVC compounds. Laffey points to Teknor’s leading medical-grade Apex PVC and Flexalloy PVC elastomers as the foundation for offering the industry grades formulated using sustainable PVC resin and plasticiser options. “Our flagship APEX 33033RV and FLEXA 35033RV tubing series use non-DEHP plasticiser and offer the best overall performance and post-gamma colour hold in the industry. Our customers partner with us to benefit from decades of formulation and manufacturing expertise and explore new options in sustainable technologies.”
These PVC products are just several of the many polymer choices that Teknor Apex offers in its wide-ranging healthcare products portfolio, serving the needs of device makers across the industry. “Our customers face increasing pressure from regulators, governments and consumers to produce more environmentally friendly products,” says Laffey. “We’re proud to say that, over the past 100 years, we’ve become the trusted partner for custom-compounded polymer solutions in medical device manufacturing, and we will continue to play our part as the industry seeks to adopt sustainable solutions to the materials used to make life saving devices.”