Recently, the MCC 2017, sponsored by the China Chamber of Commerce for Import & Export of Medicines & Health Products (CCCMHPIE), co-organized by the Sub-Chamber of Medical Dressings and Winner Medical Co., Ltd. (“Winner Medical”), was held in Beijing.
At the meeting, Li Jianquan, director of the Sub-Chamber of Medical Dressings and president of Winner Medical said “in the past decade, the medical consumables, especially the medical dressings have developed fast, and the China medical consumables enterprises have made a simple product to the world first class level and retained a foothold with high quality in the markets of developed countries, such as Europe, US and Japan.”
The reporter learns about that the medical dressings are medical suppliers of hygienic material, with high proportion in China’s export trade. At present, the exports of medical dressing in China take over 20% of the global exports of medical dressing, the top three target export markets are Europe, North America, and Asia. However, the China’s Medical Devices Trade Yearbook 2017 of CCCMHPIE shows that the China’s medical dressings exports in 2016 was $2.357 billion, with a YOY drop of 9.89%, indicating a declined export and weakened demand, thus the development becomes complicated.
High-end Dressings Possess Development Space
In recent years, the fluctuation in price of cotton, the raw material of traditional medical dressing, has impacted the manufacturers a lot, moreover, the China’s medical dressing industry has been facing with more or less problems in order pressure, business capital, human cost, environmental protection responsibility, risk control, etc.
Prof. Xi Tingfei from Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies (AAIS) said “Actually, the China’s traditional export market demand tends to be saturated while the domestic prices rise fast, with corresponding increase of labor, raw material and transportation cost, thus the export trade offer increases, and the domestic medical dressing with superiority in cost performance is losing its competitive advantage in the international market.” Furthermore, the ongoing currency devaluation and low labor and raw material cost in Southeast Asian countries occupy a certain proportion of market with increasingly apparent product price advantage.
Wang Ying, a director of Winner Medical, said “driven by the global aging, the number of operation and patients with chronic trauma grows steadily, for example, the diabetic foot ulcer is the fastest-growing chronic disease, with CAGR of 5% during 2016~2021. Moreover, the increase of home nursing and long-term nursing institutions provides development space to the advanced wound care, high-end dressing nursing market. ”
Upgrade Product Competitiveness
Allmed Medical Products Co., Ltd. (Allmed Medical) president Cui Jinhai suggested that during the medical dressing industry transformation and upgrading, the enterprises shouldadopt the strategy of changing export to domestic sales, OEM to OBM, low end to high end, extensive to fine, and extending industry chain, and rebuild corporate fundamentals through strategic management, and innovation of business model, product, process and equipment.
In this regard, the industry analysis suggested that to further occupy the international market, the domestic enterprises should abandon the traditional maladies, including low value, homogenization, low price, non-brand, take the long view, adapt to the situation, and take full advantage of the national policy support, and make innovation actively while improving the management system of the enterprise, invest more in research and development, and culture self-owned brand to enhance the competitiveness of products in the international market.