Q&A: Why TekniPlex Healthcare acquired Seisa Medical

Following TekniPlex Healthcare’s acquisition of Seisa Medical, Med-Tech Innovation News spoke to Chris Qualters, CEO of TekniPlex Healthcare, to find out more about the deal. 

What does this acquisition enable TekniPlex to do that it couldn’t do before?

TekniPlex Healthcare has long been a valued contract manufacturing organisation (CMO), providing its customers materials science-based solutions that help improve patient outcomes. By adding Seisa Medical to our solutions platform, we substantially transform our business into a fully capable contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO). Not only do we continue to combine our skilled personnel, materials science, and process technologies to develop solutions, we can now co-develop critical components and sub-assemblies, or even provide engineering services for a comprehensive device design.

TekniPlex Healthcare’s mission is to make the world a healthier place; with Seisa, we’ve added a wide array of robust capabilities and muscle mass toward that goal.

How will the acquisition affect the overall medical device sector, and TekniPlex’s offerings in particular?

With the Seisa acquisition, our solutions platform raises the benchmark of what medtech organisations should expect from a CDMO partner. We can now engage with medtech organisations from the earliest concept phases, and work on engineering materials that have specific properties to address patient needs and device performance. We also can further assist with critical component designs that address both device performance and manufacturability.

If requested, we also can provide collaborative engineering on a full device, complete with a bespoke manufacturing solution. Finally, we can select and produce the proper barrier materials to ensure the device or therapy arrives at the point of care in a safe, sterile condition while providing ease of access for clinicians to support procedural effectiveness.

What elements of Seisa’s portfolio complement TekniPlex’s existing work?

Sesia brings several significant capabilities to TekniPlex Healthcare – design engineering services first and foremost. TekniPlex Healthcare has historically shown tremendous engineering acumen pertaining to materials science and manufacturing processes; now, we also feature device design engineering that allows us to co-design and collaborate on medical devices across a multitude of therapeutic and interventional procedures.

Many new device designs not only require highly engineered polymers – one of TekniPlex’s core legacy strengths – but also integrate critical metal components. Seisa brings us a full complement of metal forming capabilities, along with specialised expertise in Nitinol (nickel titanium).

Advanced multi-material, multi-component devices and therapies will need a CDMO that can design, manufacture and in many cases assemble these components under one corporate roof. Seisa adds to our current higher-order solution capabilities with endovascular device sewing, wire braiding, and assembly capabilities. Seisa also expands our product portfolio for implantable products and procedural devices such as stents, stent graphs, mitral heart valve assemblies, and catheter delivery systems.

Additionally, nearly every product we provide today as TekniPlex Healthcare can be utilised by Seisa’s customer base – and vice versa. This is among the key factors that convinced us to bring our two organisations together.

What made you go into the services segment?

As we looked at what our customers are frequently trying to achieve with emerging medical devices and therapies, we realised that being able to provide a true end-to-end CDMO solutions platform would put us in the best position to meet their needs and continue to drive our vision of making the world a healthier place.

While TekniPlex has certainly enjoyed encouraging success with our materials science and manufacturing solutions, we recognised the need to occupy another service level. Doing so solidifies us as a valued partner that not only can assist in the design of medical technologies, but also ensure those designs fully contemplate material performance for better patient outcomes and a fulsome manufacturing solution to ensure patient safety and clinician effectiveness.

What effect will this have on both sides’ manufacturing capability?

As mentioned, our manufacturing capabilities are now far more comprehensive, allowing us to provide more solutions to our various customers. In addition, TekniPlex Healthcare’s global manufacturing network opens the ability to make each of Seisa’s technologies available wherever our customers need them. Our manufacturing network will have access to the full index of our combined process technologies, which we see as a vital aspect of being a global CDMO.