Foster Corp. Opens New Facility Dedicated to Producing Specialty Tubing for Medical Device Industry

Foster Corporation, the leading developer and manufacturer of critical polymer compounds, has opened a new facility at its Putnam, Connecticut, headquarters dedicated to producing specialty tubing for the medical device industry.

Foster has been working with OEMs to develop and manufacture compounds for medical devices for over 20 years. During this time, many requests have come into Foster for prototype tubing from customers seeking to shorten and simplify the device development process and facilitate their evaluation of new compounds and material technologies.

To meet this need, Foster has put in place a complete tubing manufacturing line with up-to-date testing and measuring equipment. Foster's qualified engineering team has over 30 years of combined medical materials knowledge, in addition to 15 years of practical experience in the manufacture of medical tubing.

Foster's materials engineering strength and experience in processing challenging compounds, coupled with this new capability, offers device developers the opportunity to optimize materials and tubing concurrently. It also takes steps out of the development process and simplifies production startup.

Evaluation of new additive technologies, such as antimicrobials, also will be easier with Foster serving as a single source for both compound and prototype extrusions.

Commenting on Foster's new specialty extrusion facility, Director of Engineering, Brian Labrec, said: "We are the first in the industry with the capability to optimize the material formulation and the compounding process with the performance of the tubing operation."

According to Ken Pickering, Foster's President and Chief Operating Officer, this new Foster specialty extrusion facility is now in full operation. He said, "We are very excited about the opportunity to shorten our customer's development cycle time for medical devices by utilizing our materials expertise, engineering capabilities and innovative process know-how. As the leader in development of specialty materials for medical device companies around the globe, Foster sees this as an extension of our core competencies, not a venture into a new business."