IBSA and Marchesini: an alliance based on technological excellence and strong human values

IBSA Group is firmly committed to developing effective therapies for the treatment of disorders and diseases with a high social impact in terms of both costs and quality of life. Its history has been characterised by the courage and outlook of its Founder, Arturo Licenziati, since he purchased IBSA (Institut Biochimique SA), a small Swiss pharmaceutical company based in Lugano, in 1985.

Within just a few years, IBSA’s shrewd strategy based on constant improvements in the quality, effectiveness and convenience of the new products developed by its researchers, had led to rapid expansion: new manufacturing sites were built in Lugano and branch offices were established in France and Italy, followed by a number of other international markets.

True to his pioneering spirit and propensity for innovation, the ingenuity of Founder and CEO, Arturo Licenziati, has allowed IBSA Group to invest with success, earlier and better than others, in therapeutic areas and in products on which few would have wagered. The strategic factors, thanks to which IBSA is able to consolidate its position with such innovative products, in therapeutic areas undergoing constant evolution, and in markets as diverse as the US and European ones, include creativity and the constant ability to play as a team in order to develop novel and challenging products, with dozens of patents already developed and still more in the pipeline.

“One of the keys to its success lies in IBSA’s rare ability to fully exploit the innovation potential and excellence of its industrial partners”, explains Franco Daglio, Chief of Technical Operations & Technical Director IBSA Group, “in an on-going quest for the most effective synergies, thanks to the special business and personal relationships it has forged over the years with its suppliers, based on mutual trust and commitment”.

Perhaps the most emblematic example of such a relationship is the lengthy and constant alliance with Marchesini Group, a leading manufacturing company that in recent years has consolidated its position in the competitive field of packaging machinery for pharmaceutical products. This relationship is founded also on a sharing of all the technical, operational and regulatory requirements needed to produce medicinal products in an international scenario characterised by on-going evolution, to be applied to the design and construction of its machinery.

The alliance between IBSA Group and Marchesini Group is a bona fide partnership that started in the late 1970s and has flourished over time to become an historical and privileged relationship: in the approximately thirty-five years of cooperation between the two Groups, IBSA has purchased a multitude of machines and production lines for its plants.

Over this time, Marchesini Group has supplied IBSA with boxing, labelling and blistering machines, and machines for primary filling and secondary packaging, as well as tube-fillers and automated case-packers for complex, specialist products (soft capsules, pre-filled syringes, conventional sterile vials, topical products in Bag-on-Valve packs). The very 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.

IBSA’s mission to provide medicinal products in the most suitable form makes it necessary to be able to rely on machinery and production lines built to the highest technological standards. This is the guarantee underlying the relationship of trust and sharing that has characterised the parallel growth of IBSA Group and Marchesini Group for over forty years.