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Cleanroom tents for innovative precision braiding from Meister & Cie.

A family business conquers the world market: the traditional Swiss company Meister & Cie AG, successful with textile braids, has entered the business of innovative medical technology. Their medical textiles improve surgical instruments or connect tendons, bones and muscles. An important building block for success is a sophisticated cleanroom concept that sets new standards in terms of cleanliness and the associated product safety.

Meister & Cie AG has its headquarters in the middle of the tranquil, hilly Emmental, home of the cheese of the same name and source of inspiration for the famous Swiss writer Jeremias Gotthelf. What is less well known is that the region in the canton of Berne is home to hundreds of commercial and industrial enterprises, some of which are extremely successful on the international markets.
international markets. One example is the Swiss family business Meister & Cie AG. It has been one of the leading manufacturers of high-quality textile braids for almost 150 years. Its roots go back to the founding of an artisanal rope factory in 1869. Until the 1960s, the company mainly produced ropes, twines and belts for agriculture and trade. Then it managed to gain a foothold with its quality products with disaster and fire protection organisations. For the increasingly popular paragliding sport, Meister AG developed a high-quality paragliding line made of Kevlar at the beginning of the 1990s. The production of cable protection hoses for motor and rail vehicle construction marked the company's entry into the industrial manufacture of textile braids. Another milestone in the company's history is the development of a precision braid for filter systems of water treatment plants. From 2006 onwards, more than 30 million metres of textile braid were produced annually in a sophisticated series production.

EXPANSION WITH VISION
In 2009, Marcel Meister, managing director in the sixth generation, ignited the next innovation stage. Since then, the company has also been developing and producing biomedical textile braids for customers all over the world. The precise fine braids made of biocompatible materials open up many new possibilities in medical technology. They are mainly used in orthopaedics and gastroenterology. They are components of surgical instruments or are used as implants for connecting tendons, bones and muscles. Precise fine meshes from a diameter of 0.04 mm open up the possibility for minimally invasive surgery to access ever smaller and finer areas of the human body. "The beginning was definitely arduous," reports Meister. "When we started with medical technology, we naturally made
made mistakes at first, but ones that helped us move forward," says Marcel Meister. We also initially had to adjust to the high cost of quality management and regulatory affairs in the new business area.
and regulatory matters in the new business field. Meister's product expansion is well thought out and is aimed at a market with enormous potential and more than good forecasts. According to estimates, the world market for technical textiles is worth around 150 billion dollars. EU sales alone are around 30 billion dollars. Including nonwovens and fibre composites, the world market volume is even more than 250 billion dollars. It is impossible to imagine operating theatres and doctors' surgeries without high-tech textiles. For example, the high biocompatibility of textile products speaks for their use as implants - they avoid rejection processes. The field of application of technical
textiles ranges from antimicrobial surgical textiles to wound dressings that no longer need to be changed and can accelerate the healing process in certain injuries, absorbable yarns for suturing internal wounds, artificial implants based on textiles and clothing based on antimicrobial textiles.

CLEAN ROOM IN CLEAN ROOM
The biggest challenge for the new line of business was the production conditions required for it. "The production of textile braids is associated with dirt that is
caused on the one hand by the mechanical processing procedures, and on the other by abrasion from the materials and lubricants used," says Meister. The solution
The solution was obvious: a clean room was needed. For this purpose, the company's main building, the 120-year-old former rope factory, was professionally equipped in several months in 2013. A
and cost-intensive process, as Meister admits. The company went one step further and developed its unique 'clean room in clean room' concept, which ultimately guarantees the greatest possible patient safety.
Technically speaking, this means: the entire process for braiding textile components or entire implants (from opening the yarn to rewinding, braiding,
cutting to length, reinforcing the ends and packaging) takes place in a class 8 clean room certified according to ISO 14644-1. All machines in series production, such as the rewinding or braiding machines, are only used for one type of raw material to eliminate any risk of cross-contamination. Since the fast-rotating rewinding and braiding machines generate turbulence, these machines are located in separate cleanroom cells within the cleanroom. In this way, the air internation flows can be optimally adjusted to ensure laminar flow in the critical area of the yarn. These cleanroom cells comply with the requirements of ISO 14644-1, class 7 - one class lower in particles than the cleanroom itself. In addition to the advantage of optimally adjusted air flows, double safety and redundancy are two key points that guarantee the production of low-particle, high-quality products. This novel production concept also facilitates
also facilitates the maintenance of the infrastructure, as individual parts of the production plant can be specifically shut down and serviced.

With the current portfolio, the CEO sees the potential in medical technology far from exhausted. In this context, he refers to current research in cardiac and neurosurgery or in the development of fibres that could deliver drugs. Here, too, he sees his company in a good position.
Global medtech groups often suffer from their own size and react more slowly to new trends or innovations. This is where SMEs like Meister & Cie AG can play an important role in the future.

Play an important role. R&D and series production under one roof, direct communication, fast decision-making and implementation of new trends and technologies, and - last but not least - the ability to react quickly to and implement new regulatory requirements are among our core competencies. All these qualities help to reduce the complexity of new projects and lead to a more streamlined approval process, shorter time-to-market and higher cost efficiency."

Meister & Cie AG
Swiss company Meister & Cie AG has been developing and producing technical textile braids such as fibre ropes and cords for wholesalers and specialist retailers, DIY stores and commercial and service companies since 1869. In addition, the company supplements its own product range with trade products and has also taken on the contract development and series production of biomedical textile braids for customers in the medical technology sector since 2009. The company is led in sixth generation by Marcel master as CEO and employs at present 25 coworkers.

www.meister-ag.ch

This article was published: Cleanroom Future Magazine 3/2018

 

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