Plastics & Rubber World - July/August 2019 - 26

PLASTICS IRELAND

Evolution, not revolution
Despite outside pressures, Tony Doherty, CEO of Irish medical moulding company
Synecco, says the national polymer industry is continuing to successfully expand

Time-to-market is key.
Beyond actual value, it's
the bottom line
Tony Doherty, Synecco

WWW.PRW.COM | JULY/AUGUST 2019

ynecco is a contract manufacturer of
plastic devices for the medical industry. Based in Galway, the company
can leverage its own in-house design capability to manage projects from development through to delivered products.
Approximately €12.5 billion worth of
medical devices produced each year in
Ireland are exported to over 100 countries around the world. While most major
multinational players are active in the Irish
market, that presence is supported by a
network of smaller suppliers, according to
the CEO of Synecco, Tony Doherty.
"There's a very strong link between
services, contract research and manufacturing. That connects with business and
academia to create a very complex ecosystem," he says.
While there are plastics production
hubs around Ireland, including Galway,
Athlone, Waterford and Cork, Doherty
goes on to explain how medtech has clustered in the same way to support various
specialties; for example, Cork has a strong
concentration of orthopaedics, while Galway has expertise in vascular technologies.
"All these companies, in each of the
hubs, have prompted a further network,
made up of both private and government
organisations, that ensure best-practise,
training and education," says Doherty.
"The medtech sector is critical to the
economy and the plastics sector is critical
to medtech."
Doherty points out that while the industry is well-established, it's continuing
to evolve. "Speaking with peers in the industry, I picked up on a series of trends,"
he explains. "Primarily, there's a considerable amount of investment, to support
in-shoring of production, scaling up of
output - which includes company takeovers - plus, there's a lot of investment in
automation."
He says this is balanced with reliance
of the UK market. "We have three critical
trade partners, the UK, Europe and the
US. But about 50% of all Irish exports are
bound for the UK, which means an unfavourable Brexit will have a critical impact
on this market."
It's a wide-ranging concern due to
market breadth, encompassing goods
and materials, through to machinery and
spare parts. But while Doherty expects
some short-term upheaval, things will ultimately settle down. Potentially leading
to a situation that sees medtech multinationals expand their Irish supplier base.
While Brexit has the potential to create drag on the wider Irish export market, Doherty says that there's another
risk on the horizon in the form of new
regulations aﬀecting medtech companies.

"Development cycles for medical devices
are getting longer due to the increasing
complexity of requirements for regulatory
approval," he says, by way of highlighting
yet another factor which will need to be
managed.

THE VIEW FROM WITHIN

Synecco was founded in 2004 and now
operates out of two locations in Ireland,
following the 2017 purchase of AJ Plastic
Components. In addition, the further facility in China oﬀers more than 50,000 sq. ft
of manufacturing space, including Class 8
cleanroom facilities.
Doherty says the fundamental reasoning behind the setup is giving customers a
choice. "Looking at production in Ireland,
cost is a factor when it comes to sustainable volumes," he says, implying that China
oﬀers lower cost on greater volumes.
Since the purchase of AJ Plastics, Doherty reports the company has undertaken
a major overhaul of production machinery
and support mechanisms. These include a
Class 8 cleanroom, plus new IT infrastructure which supports ERP data sharing. This
new investment, together with the 30 injection moulding machines, most of which
support 2K moulding and related automation, will now serve as a foundation for the
next phase of company growth.
"We acquired the company to speed
up the product development cycle and
to oﬀer an improved capability oﬀering,"
says Doherty. "It's capability, equipment,
technology, people - investment across
the whole value stream."
He continues: "Time-to-market is key.
Beyond actual value, it's the bottom line.
It's what customers want and you have to
be able to deliver."
The acquisition has also increased total
capacity across the business. Looking forward, Doherty believes that Synecco will be
able to signiﬁcantly increase total product
output over the next three years, based on
these recent changes and upgrades.
Sourcing the required staﬀ to support
this ambitious production plan could
be the one ﬂy in the ointment. "Getting
skilled employees and staﬀ retention is
on everyone's mind here," says Doherty.
"To support that, companies have to put
in place development and retention programmes, supported by related government programmes." He further believes
that there's potential for people to move
between sectors, with future polymer
engineers coming from construction and
other sectors.
But such matters are not yet giving
Tony Doherty any sleepless nights: "In the
mid-term, employment issues are not a
bottleneck to growth," he adds.

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Plastics & Rubber World - July/August 2019

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