The firm completed a major investment to increase the capacity and production expertise in sterilisable packaging applications. The plant supplies sterilisation pouches and reels to hospitals and medical device manufacturers. It also announced the launch of a new medical pouch called amcor ultra, which it claims offers &ldquoreassurance of safety and performance&rdquo. The pouches can be used by hospitals for surgical equipment use and can be recycled. Speaking to packaging news, at the official opening of the coulommiers plant, amcor flexibles vice president for medical europe sales and marketing, didier lepee, said &ldquowe have had a history for the last 30 years. 30 years ago the first pouch was one side paper and one side film. &ldquothat idea came from a hospital user. 30 years ago one of our sales representatives who has now retired went to hospital and saw a nurse taking a piece of film and taking a piece of wrapping paper and making a pouch out of it.
That was the first pouch. &ldquoafc always lead the dance and through the years has come up with many innovations &ndash first nonwoven pouches , first full peelable pouches and we now have an ultra pouch for healthcare packaging.&rdquo &lsquomarket leader&rsquo amcor&rsquos vice president for medical europe operations, michael orye, added &ldquoas we are the market leader, we are always the first ones to come up with new innovations. It also requires us to be the first ones to set the standards in our manufacturing environment and be the market leader in europe. &ldquowe are seeing a lot of products that do not have the same standards as our products coming in from the far east and other lowcost countries.
We, therefore, feel obliged to uphold our standards as the market leader. Therefore, the investment here came naturally as part of that journey. &ldquowe have a stateofthe art manufacturing facility and as we are launching a new product we have a big expectation that the ultra product is going to create new standards in the hospital pouch market.&rdquo hospital dilemma according to lepee, the ultra is extremely resistant. He said that the hospital market is currently having a dilemma. He explained &ldquoevery three to five years they have to invest in sterilisation containers for surgical instruments big metal containers. These containers are difficult to sterilise and there is also a concern about them maintaining sterility after sterilisation.
The cost of use of a container and its proper maintenance is also an issue for the hospitals. &ldquothat is why they are looking for an alternative. &ldquowith the ultra you have got reassurance of safety and performance, which you did not have before.&rdquo high standards orye said &ldquoa lot of people think that europe is not a competitive place to produce. That is not true. &ldquoeurope is a competitive place to produce. We can deliver high standards and great products and great productivity with a high quality. Ok &ndash it can come with a price. &ldquobut the premium you pay is worth it, compared to the risk you may take from buying products from somebody unreputable. The team here managed to undertake a massive renovation project. &ldquoit took them about 25,000 hours and not one single health and safety incident occurred.
That is an outstanding achievement. It really is a testament to what a team can do when they take safety seriously. &ldquoi have been here during renovation and they have dismissed contractors from the site for not meeting our standards.
