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The world's leading supplier of surgical gloves is London International Group (LIG), a British company that produces condoms and surgical gloves. The Biogel glove brand by LIG is the world's market leader in the surgical glove segment, and has resulted in increased market share even as worldwide demand for surgical gloves has also increased. LIG has a strong international presence (as do leading American producers) and are competitors to be taken into consideration when evaluating the Brazilian market.
The two leading American producers of surgical gloves are Baxter Healthcare and Safeskin. Baxter is a large medical supply company for which surgical gloves are only one product division; Safeskin specializes in surgical gloves and produces no other products. Safeskin has had notable success with a surgical glove that does not lead to dermatitis, a common side effect of other latex gloves. These hypo-allergenic gloves are more expensive than their competitors, and are still made of latex, but they avoid the use of rash-causing chemicals and proteins. Safeskin manufactures 12 different lines of gloves, including powder-free varieties, but does so at manufacturing plants in Malaysia and Thailand. The company uses the overseas facilities in part because labor costs are lower, but also because both countries are strong suppliers of rubber.
Some users have encountered allergic reactions to latex gloves even when powder is not placed on the inside of the glove. A number of companies now offer non-latex gloves in addition to traditional rubber-based gloves, but the rubber gloves remain by far the most popular. Nonetheless, several states in the United States have examined the possibility of banning latex gloves altogether. While these efforts have not been successful, they pose a threat to the domestic market share of companies in this industry, who are likely to want to increase their international presence in an effor...