The number of delivered portable composite oxygen (O2) containers of FRP for home O2 therapy (HOT) has been drastically on the decrease. Since the peak time in 2013 and 2014 when 83 thousand containers were delivered, the market of the composite containers turned out to decline by 23.1% in 2015. Except for 2016 when there was a slight increase, the declining trend did not change, namely 19.3% down in 2017 and 17.1% down in 2018 comparing with the previous year. The quantity-wise record showed 44 thousand 295 containers at last less than 50 thousand.

The main cause of the declining background is regarded to be the calmed down situation of the replacement demand for the disposed 15-year old containers which started from 2007. In terms of quantity, the situation returned to the period in or around 2010 of 44 thousand containers (about 50 thousand each in 2009 and 2011). However, there seems to be some other background warranting no optimism.

The figures used herein of the portable composite of FRP refer to the inspected figures “General Composite Containers (FRP composite) and “For O2 less than 5ℓ”shown in the nationwide spreadsheet on inspected number of each gas issued by the High Pressure Gas Safety Institute of Japan (KHK), in which the inspection is applied to imported containers and domestically produced containers. The portable composite containers of FRP have internal capacities of 1.1ℓ, 2ℓ and 2.8ℓ which account for most part of those for “O2 less than 5ℓ” defined statistically.

The current market entrants are: Asahi Seisakusho; JFE Container (domestic manufacturer); SK Cylinder (importing from Luxfer Gas Cylinders of USA); Teijin Engineering (importing from SCI of USA), who supply portable O2 containers to the suppliers of home O2 or medical gases to the regional medical gas distributors such as Teijin Pharma (Teijin Home Healthcare); Koike Medical; Hoshi Iryo Sanki; AW Medical; Fukuda Lifetech; Vital Air Japan and Philips Respironics.

Regarding the market share, we estimate Asahi Seisakusho takes about 50% while each of SK Cylinder and JEF Container takes some more than 20%. The substantial decrease of demand is attributed to nothing but the calmed-down disposition of 15-year old cylinders by Teijin Healthcare who enjoyed the top position of home healthcare market being the pioneer of the domestic HOT business and also launched to the market the FRP composite containers as a portable O2 container ahead of the other companies. They say Teijin Home Healthcare takes half of the market share of O2 concentrators now in operation. Although the demand of composite containers for replacement by top-ranked companies has settled down, there still exist other companies doing HOT business launching FRP composite containers in the market following Teijin Home Healthcare. It is predicted that the demand for replacement and new purchasing will surely continue.

According to the enquiry survey of Japan Industrial and Medical Gas Association (JIMGA), the number of container used by a patient per month has been kept stable at 5 on the average for these several years. However, during these years the increasing pace of HOT patients has been slowing down, and some HOT companies make it a business strategy to diffuse the portable O2 concentrators, which is expected to affect the demand of portable composite containers.

That is the reason why we cannot necessarily say simply that the situation just returned to the level before the start of replacement demand for the disposition of 15-year old containers.