Natpet grades for Medical Application

National Petrochemical Industrial Company, NATPET, is the producer of range of polypropylene Homopolymer, Random and Impact Copolymer resins. The company uses the State of the Art Spheripol® technology from LyondellBasell. Spheripol® technology for producing polypropylene (PP) has two loop reactors and the reactor medium is slurry phase. Other technologies such as Novolene from CB & I is based on gas phase reactor medium.

NATPET produces PP grades for Injection molding, BOPP, Raffia, Cast Film, Blown Film, Fiber (CF and BCF) and Injection stretch blow molding. As a result the products for consumer including film packaging for food and clothes, raffia tapes, shopping bags, caps and closures, rigid packaging for fruit baskets, crates, boxes, automotive appliances and many others.

In addition to the applications mentioned above NATPET decided to penetrate its polypropylene resins into the Medical and Health care application. Some identified medical applications where NATPET existing PP grades could target are provided in the below table

In terms of Market Size PP has the highest share among all the polymers, hence PP is regarded as a safe material. However, all materials including polymers must undergo various tests to qualify for medical application. To launch any polymer resin in the medical market then it has to go through lengthy qualification and trail run programs at the converters end, generally called pre-marketing, where the resin itself and the final products are tested for compliance to medical and health care requirements. But that requires first to identify and communicate with the customers. For applications such as medicals buyers of the resins have also very stringent requirements, such as precise quality control, special packaging and storage conditions and finally costly insurance coverage to accommodate any damage that may occur to life or property.

Keeping all the above things in mind, NATPET decided to start the project to promote NATPET grades for medical application. A team formed and I am appointed as the main coordinator to run the project. As a project coordinator I designed an action plan according to the management guidelines for accomplishing the project and hence successfully launch NATPET grades in the Medical and health care sector. The project is still undergoing, some broad categories of action items for this project are as below:

1. Qualifying NATPET grades for non-invasive medical application through bio-compatibility test ISO 10993 (Biological Evaluation of Medical Devices) and China regulation YY/T 0242-2007 (Polypropylene material for manufacture of infusion, transfusion and injection equipment for medical use).
2. Regulatory compliance of PP medical grades such as, REACH, FDA.
3. Confirm NATPET plant capabilities to produce medical grades and hence guide the plant for consistent quality, specific packaging and storage condition and suggest name of the medical grade.
4. Identify customers producing medical devices through PP resins.
5. Prepare short and effective questionnaire to get feedback from identified customers about their current PP grades, quantities, test and regulatory compliance requirements. time to qualify new resin supplier, etc.
6. Approach the identified customers and accordingly develop communications to present our medical grades and convince customers to go for trial run.
7. Liability and insurance coverage of medical grades.
8. Promote medical grades through exhibitions and press release.

Through this project I have acquired considerable skills in Project Management and presentation. The action plant for this project was developed with the help of CPM (Critical Path Method), the power point slides were used to present the progress with the project with the higher management, required coordination with NATPET top management, plant operations team, Sales team, Packaging and logistics team hence it helped me improving my communication skills. My knowledge about the bio-compatibility tests and procedures to obtain those qualifications increased immensely, I also visited customers and communicated with them as a part of technical team hence it expanded my sales competence. The project is still progressing and I hope that with each step I will contribute to the company and also benefit my self.