Partnering with the EU Life+ programme: Making the world's first PVC-free blood bags
Primo Medico is a partner in the international PVC-free blood bag project, producing transparent medical tubing with zero tolerances - and entirely without PVC.
PVC is a plastic material with many benefits – it is cost-effective, easily workable and can be sued for an incredible amount of different products.
In the medical sector, however, the use of PVC is on the decline as health authorities are encouraging the use of plastics without softening agents in medical equipment.
Blood bags are one of the remaining products in which PVC remains the material of choice, mostly because developing alternative materials and devising new production methods are costly endeavours.
Developing a new type of blood bag
Primo is a partner in a project with the aim to develop a viable and marketable blood bag entirely without PVC.
The project’s main objective is to show that it is possible to produce a PVC-free blood bag that will fulfil all requirements and specifications, including CE-labelling.
Blood bags are complex products involving many types of plastics, and the demands for safety and non-contamination are of course extremely high. As a result, developing new materials for blood bags means bringing together experts from the plastics industry, medical experts, scientists and health care authorities.
And that is actually one of the objectives of the project – to demonstrate how producers and scientists can cooperate to disseminate knowledge and influence demand among medical professionals.
In charge of the tubing
As a full project partner, Primo Medico is in charge of the development of new materials and production methods for the tubes and pipes for blood bags. Most of the development takes place in our clean room production facility in Zory, Poland.
A private and public collaboration
The consortium behind the PVC-free blood bag project consists of both private companies and public bodies such as the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm with financial support from the EU’s Life+ programme.
The consortium is still in the process of developing prototypes for testing, and after a hopefully successful evaluation, we hope to see the final product released before long.
You can read much more about the PVC-free blood bag project on the
project website
About Primo
Headquartered in Copenhagen, the Danish group has sales and production activities at 11 locations in Europe and China. The group currently has 980 employees and a turnover of 205 million EUR (per 31.12.2022). The company was founded and owned by the Grunnet family and, since its beginning in 1959, has specialised in designing and producing customer-specific profile solutions in plastic.