Formerra completes acquisition of Total Polymer Solutions

Formerra, a distributor of engineered thermoplastic resins, additives, and other specialty polymers in North America, has acquired Total Polymer Solutions (TPS). The acquisition of TPS is to enhance Formerra in the healthcare market and align with the company’s plan of expanding into Europe. TPS’s market presence in Ireland and the United Kingdom are particularly attractive to Formerra due to both countries’ growing leadership in medical device and equipment production. Ronan Kennedy and Eamonn Keane, TPS’s co-founders and owners, will join the Formerra team and remain invested in the business going forward. TPS is the first add-on acquisition that Formerra has completed since H.I.G. acquired the Company from Avient Corporation in November 2022.

“Total Polymer Solutions will enable Formerra to strengthen its global healthcare distribution platform while building on both companies’ shared capabilities around rapid product development, innovation, and regulatory support,” commented Cathy Dodd, chief executive officer of Formerra. “This acquisition enables us to better serve our global healthcare customers in Europe with streamlined supply chain management and faster go-tomarket support, driving significant value for all stakeholders.”

Plastic Ingenuity, a specialist in custom thermoforming for multiple industries including healthcare, is optimizing designs to make packaging more sustainable.

Jason Crosby, general manager, healthcare, Plastic Ingenuity said: “Sustainability is a big buzz right now; historically it hasn’t been of interest for this market until the last two years.

“The reason why it has taken so long to be incorporated into the healthcare game is because there’s this balance of needing to be sustainable, but also needing to think about hygiene and patient safety.”

With regards to packaging sustainably, Crosby admits that it’s a little more challenging and costly as the company would need to use virgin-grade materials. This has resulted in Plastic Ingenuity working on optimizing designs to make them more sustainable https://www.element.com/

In some cases, the company has been able to look at how parts are used, how they run through automated equipment and change the density of the parts, meaning the packaging is smaller and twice as many parts can now fit on a truck (originally 200,000 and now 400,000), resulting in reduced emissions in the transportation process. In other cases, Plastic Ingenuity utilizes its ISSC PLUS certification to enable the use of circular plastics from advanced recycling technologies.