News
Menicon Announces Completion of Floor Space Expansion at its Kakamigahara Plant
Menicon Co., Ltd. (Head Office: 3-21-19, Aoi, Naka-ku, Nagoya; CEO: Hidenari Tanaka) is pleased to announce that it has completed the floor space expansion of its Kakamigahara factory (Kakamigahara, Gifu), which produces daily disposable contact lenses.
The factory was established in 2015 as a production base for Miru 1day UpSide (trade name for Japanese market: 1DAY Menicon PremiO), a daily disposable contact lens, which was launched in Japan in December 2016. In December 2018, to cater for the growing market in daily disposable contact lenses, Menicon initiated planned floor space expansion involving construction of additional second and third floors with a view to improving efficiency in movement of people and materials. That construction project was recently completed.
Miru 1day UpSide produced in the Kakamigahara factory is a contact lens made of a high oxygen permeable material called silicone hydrogel.
This product employs a Smart Touch packaging technology which facilitates identification of the outer/inner surfaces of a lens while preventing users from touching the inner surface, and provides easy, hygienic handling of lenses. There is a growing global demand for daily disposable contact lenses. Currently, Menicon has five production lines operating for the product; the floor space expansion will allow the company to install additional lines up to a potential total of 15. The number of lines will gradually increase from now on.
For its Kakamigahara factory, Menicon has established a production system which meets the high quality standards required to produce specially controlled medical devices. The factory is designed to have a compact and traversable traffic line to prevent contamination and mixing throughout the entire production process, from receiving and processing of raw materials through shipping of finished products. In addition, the company has built an automated warehouse to uniformly manage the interim products produced on each floor of the factory. Interim products stored in the warehouse are retrieved and packaged as finished products for shipment upon receipt of orders. The factory was originally designed to allow addition of floors in a vertical direction, rather than laterally, based on the consideration of efficient movement of people and materials within the factory, including this warehouse. By employing additional steel beam method, Menicon was able to continue safe operation on the first floor during the expansion work, with no interruption of contact lens production. Thus, the factory was completed as a large scale facility among those currently in operation.
Regarding environmental and energy-saving measures, thermal insulating materials for all roofs/walls were used in order to comply with the Energy Saving Act, and an all-in-one air conditioning system and a hot/cold water generator equipped with an air-source heat pump which uses a renewable energy technology were employed. Thus, an environment that ensures effective use of energy was established for the new factory. The company also created an electricity monitoring system that is segmented for each production step and equipment for reducing electricity consumption related to the production facilities.
With completion of the floor space expansion of its Kakamigahara factory, Menicon aims to further increase sales of daily disposable contact lenses, which it sees as a significant growth field in the global market.
■Name of Facility: Menicon Kakamigahara Factory
■Address: 3-21-3 Techno Plaza, Kakamigahara, Gifu
■Site Area: 30,760 m2
■Total Floor Space: 19,338 m2 (1F to 3F)
<Kakamigahara Factory before expansion>