Product Development
Bringing a new product to life or improving an existing one is a complex process that demands skill and precision. At Palladio Group, we offer a complete product development service, to support you at every stage, from the initial concept to industrialisation.
Packaging design: from design to environmental impact
Packaging is more than just a container: it is the first impression that a product generates in consumers. This is why we take care of every detail of its design, from aesthetics to efficiency, from machinability to environmental impact, by providing you with:
- Design study: we develop the best design for your product and optimise size and grammage to reduce waste and maximise efficiency.
- Digital pantone chart development: we create custom digital pantone charts and produce accurate colour references, ensuring that your colours are faithfully reproduced on all media and at every stage of the printing process.
- Raw material selection: we guide you in choosing the most suitable and high-performance materials.
- CO2 emissions calculations: to determine and optimise the carbon footprint of your packaging.
Artwork development: from concept to print file
In the world of packaging, a picture speaks a thousand words. Our team specialises in creating artwork that not only effectively conveys the value of your product, but also simplifies the experience for the end consumer. By combining graphic design, pre-press services and thorough quality control on several levels, we process high quality files to meet specific requirements.
What we can do for you:
- Artwork processing: from scratch or by modifying existing files, while meticulously complying with technical specifications, as well as text (including those in non-Latin alphabets such as Cyrillic, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Chinese and others), layout and branding guidelines.
- Pre-print and colour proofing services: we check and optimise files (even complex and non-standard ones) to ensure compliance with technical specifications and industry standards. We perform colour corrections and image adjustments to achieve optimal results.
- Quality control, technical support and consultancy: our method integrates a transparent and meticulous dual control. First we analyse the file to make sure it is technically compliant, then we run a thorough check on the final one. We also help you find the best production solution and choose the most suitable material for your product.
Feasibility study: from the idea through to the actual project
Before starting to produce a new product or introducing a major change, it is essential to assess its technical feasibility. Our feasibility study is a detailed technical analysis that provides a clear picture of the viability of the project. The output includes a full feasibility report and physical prototype samples.
A typical feasibility study may include:
- Material sampling with prototypes for the introduction of new products or changes to existing ones.
- Internal machine testing to investigate the industrialisation and scalability of the product or material.
- Laboratory testing with extensive analysis to validate quality and performance.
Co-innovation and co-design: working together for the pharmaceutical packaging of the future
We believe that the best ideas come from open collaboration. This is why, with our co-innovation and co-design services, we can support you in the ideation and development of a new product concept from scratch.
We work alongside our customers with a strong network of partners and industry leaders that we have built up over time: top companies, start-ups, universities, research centres and patient associations. A community united by the goal of designing forward-looking solutions.
Our commitment is to revolutionise pharmaceutical packaging by creating solutions designed for patients and their ecosystem, without ever losing sight of industrial efficiency. Together, we are shaping the future of packaging.
Our co-innovation and co-design process includes:
- Open Innovation: we facilitate access to a dynamic ecosystem of the highest technological and manufacturing quality to challenge the current boundaries of innovation in the packaging industry.
- Supply chain needs analysis: we collect and analyse the needs of the various stakeholders in the value chain, starting with patients.
- Collaborative ideation: we co-create new ideas and concepts with our customers and other stakeholders.
- Rapid prototyping: we bring the first product versions to life at an early stage.
- Usage and iteration testing: we validate the user experience and functionality directly with patients to identify possible areas for improvement.
Technical Support
A solution really works when it improves everyday work. That is why our support does not stop at delivery, but continues with constant technical dialogue to help you get the greatest value from our packaging. We are not talking about mere assistance, but a true active partnership, made up of listening, shared expertise and mutual trust.
Specialist consulting: our know-how at your service
We can provide you with a team of highly qualified specialists, whose consolidated experience is a true strategic asset. Our approach goes beyond mere reactivity: we are proactive and work together to identify and analyse technical challenges, optimise operational flows and prevent any potential critical issues. Our primary goal is to turn every need into a concrete opportunity for improvement and growth.
This support takes the form of:
- Expert advice: we provide targeted and customised solutions to address even the most complex challenges and ensure effective and innovative answers.
- Proactive support: we prevent critical issues before they occur to ensure maximum business continuity and minimise downtime.
- Dedicated on-site support: on request, our technicians are available for on-site visits, to observe the operation of your packaging lines first hand. By ensuring immediate intervention, this service is ideal when starting up new productions or for quick problem solving.
Feasibility Study
Before starting to produce a new product or introducing a major change, it is essential to assess its technical feasibility. Our feasibility study is a detailed technical analysis that provides a clear picture of the viability of the project. The output includes a full feasibility report and physical prototype samples.
A typical feasibility study may include:
- Material sampling with prototypes for the introduction of new products or changes to existing ones.
- Internal machine testing to investigate the industrialisation and scalability of the product or material.
- Laboratory testing with extensive analysis to validate quality and performance.
Packaging specialists: professional technical training
We believe that the best partner is one that can transfer skills and knowledge. This is why we offer customised technical training, designed to enhance your team’s packaging skills, with activities that will help them to manage processes independently and improve their operational efficiency, day after day.
Our training offering includes:
- Customised courses: content tailored to meet specific needs.
- Practical sessions: for in-depth understanding and the direct application of the acquired skills.
- Ongoing refresher training: to stay abreast of the latest industry news and technologies.
Supply Chain
At Palladio Group we offer dedicated services to support you in optimised supply chain management, by ensuring fluidity, flexibility and speed at every stage. From the introduction of new products to the handling of urgent orders, we ensure punctuality and precision in terms of agreed times and quantities. We monitor our performance using the OTIF (On-Time, In-Full) indicator, which gives an average rating of 98%. This confirms the reliability on which you can base your planning and maintain stable processes and inventories.
Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI): outsourcing your warehouse management
The VMI service represents the highest level of integration between our processes and those of our customers. It is not simply a matter of optimising stocks, but of taking over full coordination responsibilities by replacing the customer’s team in the management of the warehouse and material replenishment.
With an advanced B2B system and EDI platform, we will ensure that your team always have what they need, exactly when they need it, by creating an integrated and transparent workflow between our businesses, to achieve optimised inventory, reduced waste and a seamless workflow. The value we offer is concrete and strategic: we will take over the management of a complex part of the supply chain, allowing you to free up internal resources and focus on your core business. Less complex issues for the team, more efficiency for the whole process.
Supporting new product launches: speed and efficiency
The success of a new product depends on a flawless launch and a well designed market entry strategy. To support you in this, we offer the possibility to plan reserved production cycles for your product. This option ensures maximum priority and flexibility, by allowing you to reserve a dedicated production period for a minimum of 36 hours. We will establish the timing together, to ensure a smooth and controlled market entry.
Rush Orders: instant deliveries for emergency situations
Our Rush Orders service is designed to deal with the most urgent requests. When every minute counts, we guarantee immediate delivery of products with a lead time of less than 2 weeks, thereby minimising wait times and enabling us to respond nimbly to market demands, even when they are unexpected.
Reserved production capacity: guaranteed production, stress-free planning
We offer companies that need greater certainty regarding availability, the possibility to reserve hours of weekly production capacity. We can periodically discuss your requirements in order to guarantee you a dedicated production slot. This solution ensures constant and stable production, thereby optimising your planning and reducing uncertainty.
Logistics
In the pharmaceutical packaging sector, logistics is not just transport, it is the vital ecosystem that connects manufacture and market in a fluid, timely and strategic manner. Efficiency today depends on optimising all resources: time, physical space and workflow. To meet these needs, we offer a suite of services that goes beyond delivery and is designed to act as a real strategic lever for your operations. From flexible inventory management to just-in-time production and the outsourcing of quality control, each solution has one goal: to make your supply chain more agile, lean and resilient.
On-Demand Delivery: inventory optimisation for maximum flexibility
The efficiency of a supply chain lies in its ability to adapt. We devised our On-Demand Delivery model to reconcile the need to be certain of having materials to hand with the need to optimise space. With this in mind, we provide two flexible solutions for maintaining dedicated stocks that are proactively managed to ensure a constant and optimised production flow. Both models can be enabled by our InFact integrated platform, which uses RFID technology to allow comprehensive real-time delivery tracking.
Consignment Stock: immediate availability at your location
Under this model, we set up our own stock directly at your plant. The materials are physically present and ready for immediate use on the production line, but remain our responsibility. This solution reduces wait times to zero by ensuring you always have what you need.
Call-Off stock: your dedicated stock on our premises
If the aim is to optimise space, this is the ideal solution. We will keep a stock of products dedicated exclusively to your company in our warehouses, ready to be ‘called off’ and dispatched as required. This solution allows you to free up valuable storage space without forgoing the certainty of guaranteed stock.
One Stop Shop delivery management: optimisation and simplicity
Our One Stop Shop delivery management service is designed to simplify and optimise material procurement. We are equipped to take care of all aspects of production and supply planning for a wide range of printed components, including folding cartons, leaflets and labels. The big advantage this brings is unified delivery, as all products ordered will be delivered on a single pallet. This reduces logistical complexity, while optimising warehouse space and lead times.
Just-in-Time service: P24, fast and flexible production
Time is a crucial resource. With our P24 service, we respond to the need for fast deliveries and agility. The P24 department specialises in the just-in-time production of folding cartons, leaflets and labels, making it the ideal solution for companies looking for responsiveness without compromising on quality. Our digital printing lines, integrated with 100% visual inspection systems, enable us to handle small batches and targeted production smoothly, while simplifying inventory management and reducing warehouse costs.
Advanced Quality Control (QC Delegation): ensuring process fluidity and speed
Trust is the foundation of any partnership. With our QC Delegation service, you can delegate us to carry out incoming controls on the product we supply with absolute peace of mind. To make this possible, we can agree on material control protocols together, using advanced proof-reading technologies. This allows us to certify the conformity of entire batches, which can then be delivered directly to your packaging lines, ready to be used without further incoming checks. A strategic advantage that reduces the time-to-market.
Traceability and Security
In the world of pharmaceuticals, trust is not an extra: it is the basis of everything. From the manufacturer to the patient, every step in the supply chain depends on this trust and protecting it means building a comprehensive security system, capable of protecting each pack on several levels: its identity, through serialisation; its integrity, thanks to tamper-evident devices; and its authenticity, with anti-counterfeiting solutions.
Serialisation: each product has its own identity. We make it unique and safe.
Serialisation guarantees the safety and traceability of a medicinal product. Our team of experts will accompany you every step of the way, from the initial feasibility study to implementation. The process begins with a marking design and testing phase, in which we study the layout of the artwork to find the best solution for your needs. We will then support you in integrating and validating your platform, ensuring error-free communication with company systems.
Serialisation can be either direct, whereby the serialisation code is printed directly on the surface of the folding carton, or indirect, by applying a self-adhesive label bearing the serialisation code to the box. We produce serialised folding cartons and labels in compliance with the requirements of European Directive 2011/62/EU and the regulations in force in Italy, Europe, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and elsewhere.
Tamper-evident measures: guaranteeing product integrity
The aim of these solutions is to make any attempt to open or tamper with the pack before it reaches the patient irreversibly obvious.
- Structural design: we develop boxes with special die-cut devices that, once forced, leave a visible and permanent mark, showing that the pack has been opened.
- Tamper-evident seals: we apply adhesive labels designed to break at the first attempt at removal, thereby providing immediate physical and visual assurance.
Anti-counterfeiting solutions: guiding choices by designing customised security
Product security is a responsibility we share. In the security technology landscape, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, as each product, market and supply chain has unique challenges. We aspire to be a strategic partner, an expert who knows the advantages and limitations of each available technology and guides the identification of the most effective customised solution.
We collaborate with the market’s leading system suppliers and conduct feasibility and validation studies on the most innovative technologies, to ensure you not only have the best solutions today, but also the most promising solutions tomorrow.
Nanotechnology: safety at the molecular level
The use of nanotechnology makes it possible to integrate into packaging physical security levels that are extremely difficult for a counterfeiter to replicate.
- Covert solutions: security devices embedded into materials or inks that are not visible to the naked eye. They can only be detected using specific instruments, thus allowing for certain validation of authenticity along the supply chain. Examples include special inks with nanoparticles, thermochromic inks (that react to heat), metachromic inks (that react to the environment), and ‘coin reactive’ or conductive inks.
- Overt solutions: visually perceptible security features that act as a first and immediate deterrent, but whose complexity makes their duplication almost impossible. Examples: customised holograms, micro-texts, microdots, micro-barcodes and QR codes, and security fonts.
Digitisation: the unique identity of each product
Digital technologies assign each individual pack a unique and unrepeatable identity, creating a traceable link between the physical product and its digital twin.
- Track & Trace: a special tag makes it possible to track a product at every point along the supply chain. This not only ensures traceability, it also means the pack can be authenticated by anyone, including the end patient. The authenticity of the product can be verified by scanning the code with a smartphone; once validated, that specific code is recorded as already verified, so that it cannot be reused on counterfeit products.
Anti-counterfeit stamps: precision and traceability
The application of the pharmaceutical anti-counterfeit stamps is a critical operation, subject to strict regulations, and requires the utmost precision and inflexible control. Our service is therefore designed to relieve customers of this responsibility. We take charge of the entire process: we manage the stamps, take care of their certified application directly on folding cartons and ensure their traceability.
To guarantee absolute conformity, each batch is accompanied by a detailed reconciliation report. This document certifies that the stamps used coincide with the folding cartons processed. The value for the customer lies in the peace of mind of having delegated a sensitive activity to a specialised partner, thus simplifying the production chain and having the certainty of a 100% compliant result.
Sustainability
We believe in progress that respects the planet and people. This is not an abstract idea, but a daily commitment that takes shape in concrete services designed to achieve environmental goals together with customers, suppliers and partners. A path based on mutual accountability and transparency in order to measure the impact of each choice and improve it. By working together, we can make the pharmaceutical supply chain more conscious and sustainable.
LCA of our Products (Life Cycle Assessment)
Understanding our packaging’s ecological footprint is the first step toward reducing your environmental impact. Our Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) service offers a scientific assessment of the environmental footprint of the packaging we produce, from the procurement of raw materials through to the point it leaves our facilities. For those interested in addressing product and process carbon footprint issues, LCA is of particular interest from an emissions perspective.
We provide clear, objective data to support your sustainability strategies, offering two levels of analysis:
- Parametric LCA: an agile assessment but ideal for obtaining an initial overview. By analysing a finite number of key variables within our packaging production process, this study allows you to compare different product and manufacturing options to rapidly identify potential areas for improvement.
- Detailed LCA: a precise, in-depth, and comprehensive analysis that examines every single variable of the packaging we supply to you. This study provides a comprehensive and granular picture of our product and process under consideration, which is set out in an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD).
- CO2 EMISSIONS CALCULATIONS: to determine and optimise the carbon footprint of your packaging.
Partnership for sustainability: a transparent dialogue for measurable impact
Being a partner means creating a constant and timely flow of knowledge and information. In the light of the new European requirements, first and foremost the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), we are able to offer expert and comprehensive know-how, by providing the data and expertise needed to meet the new challenges. Furthermore, well aware of the need to achieve certain results from an emissions perspective, the contribution we can make in line with the Science-Based Target Initiative (SBTi) is significant. By periodically sharing information about the products we supply, we can ensure that the data at your disposal is always accurate and up-to-date.
This is a strategic tool that gives you full control over the supply chain and facilitates your sustainability reporting, but is above all a resource that you can use to achieve your environmental performance improvement goals.
PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation) support and consultancy
The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) introduces significant changes for the pharmaceutical sector, but you do not have to navigate these complexities alone. We stand by your side with the targeted expertise required to ensure your packaging portfolio remains fully compliant.
Our comprehensive support services include:
- Dedicated multidisciplinary team: cross-functional expertise spanning legal, compliance, environmental, health, safety, and
structural design to guide you through every aspect of regulatory compliance. - Full material transparency: provision of all technical material specifications and compliance certificates for Palladio Group packaging.
- Packaging portfolio analysis: in-depth assessment of your secondary packaging to measure its compliance level, identify potential risks and uncover opportunities for optimisation.
- Eco-design & redesign support:
tailored assistance to design or rethink packaging structures, ensuring full regulatory
compliance while optimising grammage and minimising empty space. - Science-based approach: data-driven strategies that use tools such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to quantify environmental impact and scientifically validate every design decision.
- Specialised consultancy: supplementary, high-level support available through our active partnerships with leading specialised consulting firms.
- Tailored training: dedicated training sessions customised for your internal teams to build confidence and knowledge around evolving PPWR requirements.
Full Service
From consulting to the market: one partner for the whole process.
Turnkey solution
Managing the secondary packaging supply chain also requires the coordination of multiple activities, suppliers and skills. Our Full Service turnkey solution was created to meet this challenge and positions us as a single strategic partner taking full responsibility for the entire process.
For you and all our customers, this means having the certainty of a single dedicated partner, simplified management under a single fee and optimised logistical flows, while having maximum flexibility thanks to modular and customised designs. This service allows companies to concentrate on their core business, by entrusting us with the entire packaging process, from the development of the artwork to the release of the batch onto the market.
A complete and modular flow
The service is flexible and can include several stages, depending on specific needs. We take care of every step:
- Artwork development consultancy: project analysis and consultancy for artwork development and layout for folding cartons, labels and leaflets.
- Purchase of packaging for secondary packaging: direct purchase of folding cartons, leaflets and labels from the Palladio Group supplier.
- Quality control activities on incoming packaging material.
- Printing of variable data and application of pharmaceutical anti-counterfeit stamps on folding cartons intended for the Italian market.
- Manual or semi-automatic secondary packaging:
– identification and classification of all product elements;
– variable data printing on labels and application on blister packs, vials, etc;
– insertion of the labelled product inside the folding cartons or packing of kits, i.e. folding cartons with more than three/four components inside them. - Serialisation of flat folding cartons and Track&Trace serialisation for Europe, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, etc.
- Release of the batch directly to the market.
