Research Overview

The global medical plastics market includes commodity thermoplastics (CTP), engineering thermoplastics (ETP), thermoplastic elastomers (TPE), thermosets, and high performance polymers (HPP). By end-product family type, the market has been divided into devices, equipment and instruments (DEI), prosthetics & implants (P&I), and healthcare packaging (packaging).

Medical plastics offer remarkable benefits over conventional materials, such as metals, glass, and ceramics, and have been revolutionizing the medical industry over the last few years. They are extremely cost-effective, flexible, durable, biocompatible, chemically inert, resistant to wear and tear, lightweight, and recyclable. Plastic materials offer miniaturization, greater ease of processing and sterilization and are being used worldwide for various medical applications including medical devices, surgical instruments, capital equipment, prosthetics, implants, and pharma packaging.

Both by value and volume, CTP including polyolefins (PO), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polystyrene (PS) had the highest share in the global medical plastics market in 2020 and are expected to retain it during the forecast period. These polymers are extensively preferred due to their low costs, performance benefits, and wider availability. CTP are majorly used in packaging, such as manufacturing medical bottles, containers, prefilled syringes, caps and closures, blister packaging, blood bags, and other pharma and medical packaging products.