OLIVER MANUFACTURING PACKAGING MANUFACTURING
H E R I TAG E I N H E A LT H C A R E 2022 is seeing a change in healthcare demand. We speak to Dr. Aldin Velic, General Manager of Southeast Asia at Oliver Healthcare Packaging, about the company’s innovation and preparation for the years ahead Writer: Marcus Kääpä | Project Manager: Matthew Taylor
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s the dramatic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic subsides, we begin to see a variation in demand as normality returns somewhat. Within the healthcare space, Oliver Healthcare Packaging (Oliver) has started planning for this change in the wind, backed by a proud history of providing innovative excellence across the world. “Oliver was founded in 1890, so we have been operating for over 130 years,” begins Dr. Aldin Velic, General Manager of Southeast Asia (SEA) at the company. “Initially, Oliver was a machine tooling company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan (US), and supported businesses such as furniture manufacturers. “As the years went on, Oliver began to experiment with making different kinds of packaging almost all medical Dr. Aldin Velic, General Manager equipment, including food packaging and devices and pharmaceutical products of Southeast Asia labelling, with a focus on adhesives that were today. An adhesive was needed that used to stick labels to products. Then, in the 1960s, could stick to Tyvek® and other substrates, we really started to emphasise our focus on healthcare and Oliver answered, creating its first adhesive in light of the emerging medical device industry being coating in 1973, one that is still widely used today. formed in the US.” “Over the last 50 years, we have developed more than During this decade, it was the American multinational 40 separate coatings that are applied to substrates and chemical company DuPont that approached Oliver and materials that work differently with various sterilisation introduced its new invention - Tyvek®, a brand of synthetic modalities,” Velic tells us proudly. “But today we address flash spun high-density polyethylene material used in the broadest spectrum of healthcare applications and 116 | APAC Outlook issue 55