The Contact Lens Laboratory of South Africa began trading in 2008 and although that sounds quite recent, the contact lens manufacturing knowledge of its members and technical team dates back to the early 1990s.
The idea of sparking up a new contact lens manufacturing facility was certainly not a gamble. The gap in the market was very evident as calls, faxes and e-mails came in from across the country pleading for help. Optometrists were looking for something new, something the rest of the world had that South Africa was lacking – new designs and materials for a new millennium.
As a company, we thought it would be in everyone’s best interest if we kept a close eye on global contact lens trends and to try and get the South African RGP market back on track. The first major step forward was to scrap the manufacturing of PMMA lenses completely. This was a duty that international labs had already been following for a decade. Our introduction of Contamac’s 50dk F2 Mid Violet trial material was indeed a giant leap forward for South African Optometrists. The worries of a new patient building up wearing time over a two week period using PMMA were gone. The introduction of new gas permeable materials was essential as many optometrists were still ordering materials like Sm 38 and XL40… both discontinued in the 1990s.
Our next step was to develop an e-value specific aspheric trial set. Local optometrists were eager to see the difference in the fit of a base curve with a 0.8 flattening factor and the same base curve with the tighter 0.6 flattening factor. The results were, as expected, astonishing. Now South Africa had an RGP that focused on true corneal alignment to mask a lot more cyl than the ‘pseudo-aspheric’ well blended tricurve of old. Our release of the Genesis aspheric range of lenses has provided better visual acuity and improved lens comfort to desperate RGP wearers across South Africa.
Company’s Keywords:
soft contact lenses, manufacturing of contact lenses, scleral contact lenses, rgp contact lenses, coloured contact lenses, prosthetic contact lenses
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