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(KEP) started in 1960 as Kent Latex Products, specializing in dipped natural rubber latex tubing. Over the years, the company (a subsidiary of Meridian Industries, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) has added plants and product lines, and even expanded its latex offerings in 2001 with its purchase of dip-molding specialist Precision Latex Inc. But its entry into the extrusion ����ý in 1988 rounded out its product offerings to the extent that its extrusion enterprise now accounts for roughly 50% of KEP’s overall sales volume.

KEP operates three plants in Ohio, in Kent, Winesburg and Mogadore. All of its manufacturing facilities are FDA certified, ISO 13485:2016. Mogadore is a 25,000-square-foot facility that houses six extrusion lines tended to by 12 operators and is furnished with a Class 7 clean room, notes Greg Graham, a 23-year veteran of KEP and its senior director of extrusion operations. The extrusion operation runs 24/5, running primarily flexible PVC and TPE tubing for applications in medical/surgical, food and beverage, and most recently biopharmaceutical.

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One of KEP’s very first extrusion offerings was a sunglass holder that was popular in the 1980s and available in a variety of colors. These tubes were run through a bromination process so the tubing wouldn’t be tacky and attach itself to someone’s hair. Notes Graham, “Bromination was a process that we have done with latex tubing for years, and for a while we were one of the manufacturers providing tubing for sunglass holders that wasn’t tacky.”

In short order, KEP started producing tubing for chest drainage and blood-pressure cuffs. Today, Graham estimates that medical applications account for roughly 80% of its ����ý. In the food and beverage space, KEP makes tubes for beverage dispensers common in fast food restaurants, which connect a bag situated in the urn to the spigot. It also supplies tubes used for dispensing nacho cheese. Over the past 12 months, KEP converted nearly 1.7 million pounds of material into tubing.

At first blush, it might be tempting to consider these as commodity tubes sold through distribution networks. Fact is, KEP sells directly to OEMs, produces tubing under tight specifications using the latest inline quality control technologies, and will even do some light assembly to add value to its extrusion offerings. On the medical side, it will also produce tubing with up to six lumens.

Of KEP’s six extrusion lines, the oldest is a 2.5-inch NRM with a 24:1 L/D ratio, four are 2.5 inches, 24:1 L/D extruders from Davis-Standard, and its largest is a 3.5-inch, 24:1 L/D machine from Graham Machinery’s American Kuhne brand. Downstream, KEP relies almost entirely on vacuum sizing (the exception being crimped tubing), utilizing Conair’s MedLine MedVac tanks, furnished with pullers and cutters. Two of the tanks are Conair high-speed Multi-Pass units, which Graham says, “are lifesavers, production boosters and efficiency builders.” Most of what KEP extrudes is cut to length, though it has spooling capabilities as well.

On each of its six extrusion lines, KEP relies on downstream cooling/sizing, pulling and cutting technology from Conair. Source: Kent Elastomer Products

On each line, KEP uses two-axis LaserLinc inline ultrasonic wall-measurement technology for outside diameter (OD). The tubing maker has two offline LaserLinc OD gauges as well. KEP designs its own tooling and works with a local machine shop to manufacture all pins and dies. In development at this writing, Graham discloses, is a pin-design two-lumen tube that will enable the customer to separate the two tubes to connect to fittings that are about six inches apart.

Having six extrusion lines enables KEP to dedicate some lines to specific products. One machine is used exclusively to make tourniquet-band profile extrusions. These are nonlatex surgical tourniquet bands made from a proprietary blend of high-performance materials. The material blend is specially formulated to mimic the desirable physical properties of latex, such as excellent stretch, easy tying and untying, and good grip on the skin.

Other lines are devoted to thin-wall products. Some are generally used for tubing used in food and beverage applications, where there are specific regulatory requirements. Others can be utilized for research and development, and prototyping/sampling. KEP can process any material on any line, though it avoids processing PVC on the 3.5-inch extruder. All tubes made by KEP are monolayer.

Upstream, KEP relies on Maguire Product’s four-component gravimetric weigh scale blenders. It feeds materials from gaylords and is a big devotee of Maguire’s Sweeper Unloading System. The Sweeper is designed to empty a gaylord or octobin with zero operator intervention during unloading, leaving minimal material by the end of the unloading process. KEP has at least one of these devices on each line, more depending on how many materials are being fed to make a product. Says Graham, “We love them. I think we bought the first one they sold, and now we have six. They just make sure that every pellet goes into the system without needing operators to rake inside the gaylord to get material to the hose.”

KEP tools are designed in house and fabricated by a local tool builder.

KEP runs tubing down to a 0.030 inch inside diameter (ID) for applications such as orthodontic tubes (which are cut and used as bands for braces) up to roughly a 0.75-inch ID. While it has a capable control system, Graham says KEP relies a lot on pen and paper to track run records, processing set points and the like. “We know what tooling we used, what the screw rpms were, the temperature profiles and vacuum level.”

The company’s extrusion ����ý has grown virtually every year since its inception, save for the pandemic period, which mostly impacted its food and beverage ����ý. Graham notes that landing new customers — as was the case with the two-lumen product — and working with existing customers on new projects, has contributed equally to this performance. But Graham also credits many projects to a somewhat unusual source: its material suppliers.

He says, “We have a great relationship with our suppliers. My material reps are in many extrusion facilities and deal with customers at the OEM level that might have a tubing need, and they recommend us regularly. The first thing they notice is how clean our facility is. They tell us, ‘Wow, your floors are shiny. The aisle ways are clear. Everything is organized.’ So, we ‘show” well, and on top of that we are very efficient. We get lots of recommendations based on all of that.” KEP mainly buys from Avient, Teknor Apex and Star Plastics.

KEP extrudes PVC tubing in a range of sizes, shapes and thickness for medical, food/beverage and other applications.

KEP is also very lean. In 2006, it implemented Lean Enterprise, an improvement strategy based on removing waste from all aspects of its ����ý. As part of that effort, all managers and supervisors are certified in Lean Mastery, and every employee is trained in Lean concepts. KEP conduct ‘kaizens’ (improvement projects) each month at all three facilities and over 85% of its employees have participated in at least one event.

Big Move in Sustainability

On the new product front, KEP recently introduced a line of biopharmaceutical tubing for medicine development and medicine manufacturing. Basically, the tubing is used to convey medicine from one point to another, say for example a large container to a smaller one. This is an application that traditionally has been held by stainless steel or silicone and platinum-cured silicones. KEP’s BioVTEX tube is TPE based. Stainless steel tubes for this application can take days to clean, Graham says, whereas silicone-based products might be overengineered and too expensive for the task. In the case of BioVTEX, the tubes are merely swapped out.

The fact they are ultimately discarded, these tubes are highly engineered so that medicine does not cling to inner walls and create residue. Says Graham, “You don’t want the tubing and the medicine to grab to the point where there is residue that gets generated and perhaps moved to the second container. We’re competing against some big companies in this space and look at it as a big growth opportunity in 2025, 2026 and beyond. It’s a big commitment for us. The testing of the finished products costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to get to the validation stage, but we are beyond that.”

Another TPE-based tube is establishing KEP’s commitment to sustainability. Also for biopharmaceutical applications, EcoVTEX tubing is produced from a bio-based TPE and offers a 50% reduction in carbon footprint without sacrificing performance.

“We might be smaller than many of our competitors, but we think we are more proactive, and more solution focused,” Graham says. “We’re big on collaboration; it’s not just about churning out pounds. We have a lot of people coming to us with product ideas where they need prototypes. We turn around prototypes faster than any other place I’ve worked. We like pushing the envelope, and our customers get a sense of that right away. And when we get it right, the customer sticks with us. Half the time, in fact, we’re coaching the customer on the next step they might need to take in product development. 

“And customers are not just working with their sales professional. They are working with me and the rest of my technical team. Sometimes John Danes, the president of KEP, is on calls. We’ve got a long history with some really good customers, and the newer customers tend to stick with us because we got them to the validation state as easy as anyone for a validation. We’re used to all that hard stuff — getting the validations, meeting or exceeding the quality standards, delivering product within a two-week lead time.”