Objective
Problem
More than one million people die each year from counterfeit medicines. 700,000 people in Africa die each year as victims of counterfeit malaria or tuberculosis drugs. The pain is not just financial – more than 200,000 jobs are lost due to counterfeiting in the US and Europe alone.
Solution – the innovation
Authenticity can be guaranteed by adding holograms to each individual box or bottle of medicine, but costs have so far been prohibitive. Inmold has found a way to mass-produce such holograms at least 100 times faster and 10 to 10,000 times cheaper than current state-of-the-art, and as a small and simple expansion of packaging equipment already commercially available. Inmold’s innovation can be both retrofitted and delivered with new equipment.
The project
Inmold has taken out four patents on the innovation, demonstrated a prototype with success with respect to parameters such as price and production speed, and established that there is an interesting market opportunity. However, since the pharma industry is quite conservative it is necessary to show customers customized designs as well as to get feedback from the market on sales and price models, implementation strategies and product features, which is the purpose of the project.
Business model
Inmold and Danapak has formed a collaboration where Inmold supplies production equipment and consultancy to Danapak using a licensing model with profit sharing. Danapak already supplies packaging equipment to the pharma industry and, hence, is a perfect partner for Inmold, who cannot approach the pharma market alone.
Customers and market
The pharma market is very large, yielding a significant packaging market volume of at least €700m. Danapak has a market penetration of 20-35%, depending on segment. Glaxo Smith Kline, Johnson & Johnson and LTS (Lohmann Therapie Systeme) have already shown a keen interest and will deliver feedback to Inmold during the project.
Fields of science
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesmalaria
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugs
- natural scienceschemical sciencespolymer sciences
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinepneumologytuberculosis
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrymetalloids
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
2970 Horsholm
Denmark
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