Lubrizol (Wickliffe, Ohio) announced today that it will work with Polyhose (Wilmington, North Carolina) to create a medical tubing plant in Chennai, India’s home state of Tamil Nadu.
The new site enables Lubrizol to boost its local medical tubing volume five-fold. The tubing will go toward neurovascular and cardiovascular medical applications, such as balloon catheters and minimally invasive procedure catheters.
The companies expect to break ground on the Chennai facility in 2025, with operations going live in 2026. The project broadens Lubrizol’s previously committed $350 million to support local manufacturing in India. Earlier this year, Lubrizol opened a Global Capability Center (GCC) in Pune and announced the purchase of a 120-acre plot land in Aurangabad to construct Lubrizol’s largest manufacturing facility in India and second largest worldwide to support South Asia’s growing transportation and industrial markets.
“This agreement brings precision manufacturing technology into India – a new business opportunity for the country to serve critical care markets in India and across the globe,” Bhavana Bindra, Lubrizol’s managing director in India, the Middle East and Africa, said in a news release. “Lubrizol is proud to enable high-quality solutions and local access with in-region partners, ensuring the region expands into new categories while reducing reliance on imports to service medical device needs.”
Shabbir Y J, managing director of Polyhose India, says the new memorandum of understanding with Lubrizol takes the companies’ seven-year-old collaboration to the next level. “This MoU marks a new chapter in our shared journey, and we are proud that in Tamil Nadu, we have experienced substantial growth in recent years.”
The new plant will produce tubing with Lubrizol’s advanced medical-grade thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) and other thermoplastic polymers. The manufacturing facility will be ISO 13485 compliant.
“We are honored to collaborate with Polyhose and the Government of Tamil Nadu for this exciting project,” said Rebecca Liebert, president and CEO of Lubrizol. “India serves as a hub for Lubrizol’s innovation and growth, and our ongoing investment highlights our dedication to a local-for-local and local-for-global strategy in India. With this latest investment, we are positioned to deliver world-class medical tubing and play a significant role in the growth of the Indian medical industry.”
