Participants in CooperVision’s Innovation Tour, which included sessions on how best to prescribe and sell contact lenses, along with information about the company’s manufacturing process and its commitment to sustainability and the welfare of communities around the world.
Innovative contact lens manufacturing processes and the impact on patients and communities
By Margery Weinstein
Editor-in-Chief
Review of Optometric Business
Nov. 6, 2024
When you get your contact lens inventory in your office, and your patients get their supplies of contacts delivered, the process behind creating those products isn’t top of mind.
At the end of September, right after Vision Expo West 2024, around 20 optometrists and two media members, including Review of Optometric Business, were invited by CooperVision to an “Innovation Tour” in Costa Rica, the site of one of its manufacturing facilities.
Attendees got an inside look at the process CooperVision uses to develop new products, like its new clariti 1 day Multifocal 3 Add.
Bringing Culture of Inventiveness to Life
Michele Andrews, OD, CooperVision’s Vice President, Marketing and Professional Affairs, Americas. Dr. Andrews said attendees of the Innovation Tour would have the opportunity to learn about, and witness, the company’s “inventiveness.”
CooperVision hoped that this in-person time with ODs at one of the sites of its manufacturing process would offer the chance to spotlight the company’s core values: “We are dedicated,” “We are inventive,” “We are friendly” and “We are partners.”
“We modeled this event on bringing our culture of inventiveness to life,” said Dr. Andrews. “You will see our inventiveness in manufacturing and packaging, in how we move lenses and our inventiveness in how we take care of people and planet.”
Innovation to Serve the Needs of a Growing Patient Demographic
The average age of Americans is currently 38. In most cases, that’s within five years of needing presbyopia correction, CooperVision Senior Director of Brand Portfolio Development Alice Hsueh, pointed out.
CooperCompanies Senior Director of Corporate Responsibility Aldo Zucaro noted there are 1.8 billion people with presbyopia worldwide. Some 45 percent of the global population has uncorrected presbyopia. That means that this easily corrected visual impairment is negatively impacting the lives of many people, especially those already struggling.
He described presbyopia correction as “the single biggest thing needed to help low-income people earn a living.”
CooperVision conducted an ethnography study to learn how presbyopia affects people in their everyday lives. One participant in the study, for example, reported difficulty reading the labels on her bottles of prescription pills.
Aldo Zucaro, CooperCompanies Senior Director of Corporate Responsibility. Zucaro says that presbyopia correction can change the lives of whole families.
Another spoke of not being able to knit and watch Jeopardy at the same time, and yet another patient spoke about not wanting to go to the grocery store because they couldn’t read the labels on the cans.
“If you help a person with vision you not only change the trajectory of that person’s life, but of their family,” Zucaro said.
The good news is the eyecare provider can find solutions for these people by focusing on the benefits instead of the drawbacks of multifocal contact lenses.
“It’s the confidence of telling the patient: this is what you need, not 400 different things [to try],” said Zucaro.
CooperVision believes its newly designed clariti 1 day Multifocal 3 Add is the solution that can save patients from hours of testing different presbyopia correction solutions, or being told they need one visual solution for distance and mid-distance work, and another for close, detailed tasks.
Multifocal with Binocular Progressive System
“We wanted to create a simple multifocal system for all stages of presbyopia that’s also easy to fit,” said CooperVision Director of Research Programs Percy Lazon de la Jara.
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“We need to break the tradition of keeping the same design in both eyes,” Lazon de la Jara said, explaining that in the updated clariti 1 day Multifocal 3 Add, the dominant eye is kept at a low add. The two lenses are designed to work together, so that with both eyes open and working together—how people actually use their eyes—visual quality is the best it can be.
The lens is also intended to be easy for practitioners to fit. There are three different designs to choose from and a fitting guide that was written to be user-friendly.
It also was designed for enhanced comfort with what is being marketed as the lens’s Comfort Edge with WetLoc Technology. Along with the added comfort is a design that CooperVision says is easier for new wearers to handle. The company says this makes clariti 1 day a great first multifocal lens to fit patients into. It’s easy to achieve optimal vision with this lens, it is highly likely the patient will find it comfortable, and it is easy to insert and remove.
In addition, the price point of clariti 1 day is lower than that of CooperVision’s premium multifocal MyDay. This makes it a good entry point for new multifocal wearers. A patient could conceivably get their first taste of multifocals in clariti 1 day and then move into MyDay in the future.
Who is a Contact Lens Patient?
Steve Rosinski, OD, CooperVision Senior Manager, Professional Affairs. Dr. Rosinksi says ODs should proactively talk about the opportunity of wearing contact lenses with every patient.
CooperVision is hoping the new and improved clariti 1 day Multifocal will broaden the perception of who can wear contact lenses.
“Everyone is a contact lens patient until proven otherwise,” said CooperVision Senior Manager, Professional Affairs Steve Rosinski, OD.
The key, says Dr. Rosinksi, is proactively bringing up the opportunity of wearing contact lenses with every patient.
Often, the patient assumes the doctor would have brought it up if the doctor thought they were a good candidate for contacts, and the doctor assumes the patient would have asked about contacts if they were interested in wearing them.
According to Contact Lens Institute research, less than one-in-three eyeglass-only patients had contact lenses presented as an option at their last exam.
Getting as many patients as possible into contact lenses that will improve their lives is beneficial to the patient and practice alike. Dr. Rosinski noted that the lifetime value of 10 contact lens-wearing patients is as high as $100,000.
Good for Patients, Practitioners, Communities & the Planet
Creating a product like clariti 1 day requires a significant workforce. CooperVision found that workforce at Coyol Industrial Park in Alajuela, Costa Rica, just outside of the country’s capital, San Jose. This manufacturing space includes up to 200,000 sq. ft. in original lots and up to another 100,000 sq. ft. in additional lot space.
Erick Elizondo, CooperVision Costa Rica Plant Manager. Elizondo pointed out the many efforts the company has made to create both a sustainable manufacturing and production process and a great place to work for members of the local community.
There are currently more than 1,200 CooperVision associates working there. There is a cafeteria on-site along with childcare resources, Costa Rica Plant Manager Erick Elizondo, shared. The employees receive full health benefits, including vision and dental coverage. They work in shifts of 12 hours, alternating three days off one week, then four days off the next.
In addition to providing many members of the local community with quality jobs, the plant, like all of CooperVision, is committed to sustainability.
CooperVision manufacturing sites, including the one in Costa Rica, along with those in Rochester, N.Y., Puerto Rico, and the UK, use renewable electricity from hydroelectric, wind, solar, biomass and geothermal sources. These facilities have achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
Some 98 percent of plastic used in CooperVision’s manufacturing process at its West Henrietta, N.Y., Scottsville, Ariz., UK, Costa Rica and Puerto Rica manufacturing plants is recycled. Ninety-five percent of materials used in production are recycled.
In Costa Rica, 100 percent of the plastic used in manufacturing is recycled and 90 percent of materials used in production are recycled. The Costa Rica site achieved a paperless manufacturing process by using electronic records, thereby saving 64 tons of paper per year.
Through its Net Plastic Neutrality program, CooperVision, in collaboration with Plastic Bank, has to date prevented the equivalent of nearly 400 million plastic bottles from reaching the world’s oceans.
“Our aspiration is to leave no fingerprint or footprint on earth,” Zucaro said. It’s also important to the company to help people in the process. “It’s the people plus planet. It’s the plus that makes us different,” he said. “It’s those two things together, versus just doing environmentalism for the sake of environmentalism.”
Innovation Tour participants getting ready to walk through CooperVision’s Costa Rica manufacturing plant. The plant maintains a “cleanroom” environment necessitating the protective coverings seen in the photo.
CooperVision says its Net Plastic Neutrality program with Plastic Bank has impacted 500+ communities and 7,000 individuals since its inception.
The company says that by the end of 2026, hundreds of Plastic Bank collection members and their families in Indonesia will be eligible to receive vision screenings through its vision care program.
The money that is generated from the Plastic Bank collectors goes back into the communities of these collectors. For example, CooperVision sponsors tree planting campaigns at local schools and donates regularly to a shelter in Costa Rica for single teen mothers.
Walk-Through Innovation
Attendees of the Innovation Tour were given a guided walk-through of the plant. To maintain “cleanroom” standards, attendees were given white protective suits to put on along with shoe coverings and coverings for their heads. There were even coverings provided for those with beards.
The plant was quiet to the point that nearly the only sound was the churning of the machinery. As attendees watched how each individual component of CooperVision’s products is created and then brought together with the other parts, and then, finally, put into the packaging, it was easy to imagine the different pieces of CooperVision’s mission coming together. The Costa Rica site alone produces more than 600 million contact lenses each year.
A well-nurtured local workforce created products using sustainable materials and energy. This process would deliver products that bring a wider swath of patients into contact lenses that improve their lives.
Margery Weinstein is editor-in-chief of Review of Optometric Business. You can contact her at: mweinstein@jobson.com
