Source: www.tradingmarkets.com

DUBLIN, Ireland — Research and Markets has announced the addition of “Addressing Issues in Medical Manufacturing” to their offering.

This Frost & Sullivan research service titled Addressing Issues in Medical Manufacturing provides an overview of the medical manufacturing scenario in Europe, together with the challenges, drivers and restraints affecting key market participants. Insights are provided about new concepts such as outsourcing and offsite manufacturing. Hot spots in global outsourcing and offsite manufacturing, along with an in-depth examination of best practices in medical manufacturing, are also detailed.

With the growing demand for medical devices and shrinking healthcare expenditures, product pricing has become a central issue in medical manufacturing. The limited supply of raw materials, complex regulations and the lack of sufficient skilled labour are making it increasingly difficult for European medical device manufacturers to tackle the pricing issue. The mounting threat of low-priced products from Asia has made European manufacturers look to outsourcing and offsite manufacturing as potential solutions. Almost 80.0 per cent of medical device companies in Western Europe have either outsourced their products completely or partially, or would do so within the next five years.

Many manufacturers have benefited from outsourcing the different stages of manufacturing such as sourcing, production, assembling, packing and sterilisation and logistics. At the same time, different countries are attracting various types of medical manufacturers. “Medical manufacturing in Europe has witnessed radical change in the last decade,” notes the analyst of this research. “Manufacturing no longer occurs at a single place; from sourcing to assembling to packaging, all these functions are performed at different places in a bid to attain cost efficiency, paving the way for outsourcing and offsite manufacturing.” The global hot spots for medical manufacturing include Poland, the Czech Republic, China, India and Brazil.

Positive Trade Regulations Support Advances in Medical Manufacturing

The limited supply of resources in Europe, escalating and extremely volatile raw material prices, high labour and manufacturing costs in comparison to their Asian counterparts and new labelling regulations threaten European medical device manufacturers. “Competition from inexpensive products made by Asian manufacturers, and the lack of sufficient skilled labour have posed significant challenges to medical device manufacturers in Europe,” remarks the analyst. “However, regulations promoting trade between EU countries, together with the euro, which is stimulating pan-European trade, will continue to drive market expansion.”

EU regulations state that the movement of goods and services among the 27 member EU states is permitted freely with only a few minor trade restrictions. This movement of goods is considered ‘acquisitions’ and ‘dispatches’ rather than imports and exports, allowing Western Europe easy access to certain raw materials. At the same time, the existence of a single currency between the 27 EU countries has encouraged trade among them. The euro has boosted the imports of intermediate goods from low-cost countries, thereby lowering production costs and focussing on the higher value-added stages of the production chain. These trends are supporting the medical manufacturing market in Europe.