Medical packaging opens room for promising growth: MDC Sdn Bhd

Medical Devices Corporation (MDC) Sdn Bhd, founded in 2007, manufactures flexible pharmaceutical packaging bags used in intravenous therapy of various sizes between 50ml to 6 litres.

These 50ml to 1 litre bags are used to hold saline for IV drips. The three litre bags are used for irrigation (washing activities during surgical operations) while peritoneal dialysis bags come in two, five and six litre capacities.

Among the company’s other products are metabolic solution bags that come in 350ml, 500ml and 1 litre capacities. The 500ml bags are often used to provide drips that contain calcium for cows that have just given birth.

“When the demand for calcium for milk production exceeds their bodies’ ability to mobilise calcium reserves, cows can develop ‘milk fever’, hence the need for calcium drips. We export about 500,000 bags a year to Australia,” said Loke Khing Hong, director of Medical Devices Corporation Sdn Bhd.

Locally, the company provides 300,000 to 500,000 bags a year to a local manufacturer of various medical solutions.

Starting with just two employees, the company now has 10 — an engineer, production manager, quality inspector and production operators. Workers handle two printing and cutting machines and two radio frequency welding machines in a semi-automated manufacturing environment located in a 6,000sqft light industrial factory. The company imports the medical-grade polyvinyl chloride film and tubes used to manufacture the bags in a “100k clean room”.

The company’s production machinery can be configured to manufacture 1.2 million bags of various sizes a year, with a total defect rate of less than 0.5% . Recently, the company secured a Bank loan to purchase another machine that can produce an additional five to six million bags a year to boost its production capability.

Moving forward, the company will move from being a pharmaceutical packaging manufacturer to become a contract manufacturing hub for both medical devices and pharmaceutical products.

“We are developing a dialysis product for use in the continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis treatment, an alternative kidney therapy which was highlighted in the Malaysian Budget 2014 and recently promoted by the Health Ministry,” he said. The Company also plans to produce peritoneal dialysis fluid in the future.

Apart from that, the company is currently involved in the manufacturing of various bags for an automated wearable artificial kidney project led by a US company that has a presence in Singapore.

“This automated wearable artificial kidney will be introduced in the market by 2017 after registration with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is complete,” he said.

The company is also working with a group of Canadian kidney specialists to develop a new dialysis solution for FDA registration. Under the collaboration, the company will have the marketing rights for ASEAN by 2016 to introduce the dialysis solution and other technology.

Apart from that, Loke said as the company increases its production capability, they will also venture into manufacturing blood bags. These bags are used for the storage of whole blood (which is the unprocessed blood combined with an anticoagulant during the collection process).

/20-03-2014