IBSA Farmaceutici and Marchesini Group: a partnership that promotes the excellence of Italian manufacturing

Offering people medicinal products in the most suitable form and developing pharmaceuticals that combine optimum compliance with convenient delivery systems, whilst guaranteeing safety and sustainability: this is IBSA’s vocation. Upholding this mission calls for ground-breaking technology, creativity and a flair for innovation, brilliant insights that drive an on-going commitment to meeting patient needs.

And it was precisely an ingenious idea of the Founder of IBSA Group, Arturo Licenziati, that led to IBSA Farmaceutici’s acquisition, in the Italian market, of a small plant in Lodi that looked destined to close and that, in order to stay in business, required a complete overhaul at all levels: construction, regulatory, organisation and production.

The plant did, however, possess the technology required to manufacture soft capsules for the food supplement market. “True to his ideals, Arturo Licenziati decided to use that technology to manufacture soft capsules also for the pharmaceutical market,” recalls Alessandro Di Martino, Special Projects Consultant, Technical Operations Department of IBSA Farmaceutici Italia, “A brainwave that proved to be a winner as, following the complete refurbishment of the plant, it led to the manufacture of the first medicinal products in soft capsule form.”

Today, the Lodi plant is one of the mainstays of what IBSA Farmaceutici has grown to become, a national and international pharmaceutical sector pioneer, equipped with cutting-edge, hi-tech equipment for the manufacture of highly-specific products.

One of the strategic factors that has allowed IBSA to consolidate its position with novel products in therapeutic areas undergoing constant evolution and in very diverse markets is its ability to establish and build partnerships that promote the excellence of Italian manufacturing and enterprise. This has been possible thanks to the special business and personal relationships that IBSA and its Founder have succeeded in nurturing over the years with its suppliers, based on mutual trust and commitment and a sharing of the common values of excellence and innovation, in addition to all the technological, operational and regulatory requirements that are demanded of high-quality production.

Perhaps the most emblematic example of such a relationship is the lengthy and productive cooperation with Marchesini Group, a well-established manufacturer in the competitive field of machinery for the packaging of pharmaceutical products. The alliance between IBSA and Marchesini is a bona fide partnership that started in the late seventies and has grown to become an historical and privileged relationship. When, in 1985, Arturo Licenziati left the small Swiss pharmaceutical company Inpharzam - the creation of which he had guided as CEO - to take over IBSA (Institut Biochimique SA) in Lugano and initiate the lengthy history of IBSA Group’s entrepreneurial successes, he nevertheless maintained his well-consolidated relationship with the small Bologna-based machinery manufacturer owned by Massimo Marchesini.

Over the past thirty-five years, IBSA has purchased for its plants a great many machines and production lines from what has flourished to become Marchesini Group. Marchesini Group now supplies IBSA’s Lodi plant with highly automated, hi-tech primary manufacturing and secondary packaging lines, designed and developed to meet precise complex and specialised production requirements.

The hi-tech machinery that IBSA recently purchased from Marchesini Group includes two custom-built systems for the automated inspection of pre-filled syringes and integrity controls on conventional glass vials and ampoules for products for injection.

An investment that goes beyond the formulation, with latest-generation plant and technologies that make it possible to provide patients with high-quality products.