The circle line: Junkosha's tubing approach

Ian Bolland spoke to Joe Rowan, president and CEO of Junkosha in Europe and the US to talk about the company’s tubing offering, PHST and the challenges facing the company in that sector.

One of Junkosha’s main strengths is that peelable heat shrink tubing (PHST) is prominent when in the catheter market, with the material able to provide solutions that cater towards smaller catheter-based products and procedures.

Explaining more about the innovations that has gone into Junkosha’s development of PHST, Rowan says: “By increasing the shrink ratio to 2.5-1, which nobody else has accomplished, we’ve been able to allow customers to either consolidate part numbers or consolidate processes. Rather than having to perhaps do a couple of pre-shrink processes, customers can now achieve the final catheter product with minimal pre-shrink and can accomplish a finished catheter by eliminating or minimising processes. They can actually use lower tolerance materials, lower cost materials because of the take-up in inherent in the 2.5-1 approach or solution.”

The company’s 65 years of experience has brought about deep knowledge in fluoropolymer manipulation along with processing, elongation and expansion techniques – which Rowan claims is the only product that features these characteristics – which he believes is to Junkosha’s advantage.

“I think our strategy has been to focus on our core competence and to leverage that core competence to address unmet needs in the market. That is when you’re able to hit that kind of sweet spot that gives you a sustainable business advantage.”

Despite that 65-year pedigree, Rowan feels that the company is still a well-kept secret – having only entered into the European and US markets from 2009 onwards, initially through a partnership with WL Gore – making it one of the company’s biggest challenges despite feeling as though the business is a leader in this particular space.

“After we went our separate ways, Junkosha took it upon themselves to be masters of their own destiny in the western world. We really have only been exposed directly to customers in the western world since around 2011 or 2012. In that time we’ve made really good progress. Our revenue has increased significantly but it’s an ongoing challenge to increase our awareness since we are relatively new to the western world even though we’ve been around such a long time in Japan.

“I think what has happened with our key customers is that they have been exposed to our capabilities, they’ve used the products, been delighted with the products and the services we provide and we have grown very healthily with key customers since we have executed very well. So, this whole awareness thing is slowly, but surely, taking care of itself.

“I do think that is the biggest challenge we have rather than perhaps a technical one since we have really been the leader and have frankly owned this whole PHST space. We have innovated very strongly in that area, and I think it is fair to say that we’re looked upon as the leader and innovator in that space.”

While the company maybe dealing with fairly niche areas of the supply chain, and is therefore not as exposed as others, Rowan insists that niche is good if it is done well.

“Niche is actually good if the niche itself is of significance and of some magnitude, which is why the focus on the catheter market has turned out to be a really good choice. It is a large market, it is a growing market, it has unmet needs that are very well aligned with what we do and that has proven to be a good choice for us.”

For such a niche element of the market, one would anticipate that there are challenges in the supply chain when it comes to the development of tubing and the material required, but the solution appears to be in-house.

“We make our own fluoropolymers. In fact, one of our strong areas of intellectual property in embedded IP is our know-how and trade secrets accrued over that 65-year period. We make our own equipment in terms of processing the tubing. In terms of the other side of the supply chain we have our own highly trained peel salesforce which focus on the key customers in the global catheter market. That has proven to be very successful.”