Animal health and veterinary product producers are operating in a peculiar middle ground. Producing and selling medical-grade products means they are under constant scrutiny and are governed by strict regulations. And their end customer is someone with a pet or livestock, which brings an emotional layer to selling. Packaging needs to strike the right balance between regulatory security and reassuring shelf appeal.

In our years working closely with animal health businesses, we see six key topics that matter when getting the partnership right. We’ll touch on each one briefly and illustrate our insights by talking through a related solution.

Let’s jump in.

Short lead times to get to market

We’ve worked with enough clients in the animal health space to know that the most often faced challenge when getting a new product to market is turnaround time. Shorter lead times mean getting to market faster.

We recently delivered solutions for a multinational pharmaceutical company, manufacturing in Ireland and distributing globally. They needed supply of ultra-fast lead-time cartons with automated ordering, production and compliance systems. Specifically, they needed multiple SKUs of cartons 48 hours from the placement of an order with the ability to produce these cartons to the highest level of quality standards.

In response, CoLab Packaging built a fully automated end-to-end system to process these orders with minimal intervention. As well as vastly speeding up the process, this removes the risk of human error from the system.

There are two critical benefits to the system:

1. Producing and delivering the order in 48 hours

2. Achieving and reporting on the level of quality required

Quality packaging to secure and stand out

Adhering to industry safety standards is undoubtedly one of the biggest hurdles faced by our clients in the animal health sector. Consider all the tasks primary and secondary pharmaceutical packaging must fulfil:

Protection from light, excessive moisture/dryness/temperatures, crushing, mechanical shock, and damage from handling
Ease of accessibility/administration
Child-resistant

To complicate matters further, companies still need to find ways to make secure packaging attractive on the shelf without appearing overly ‘industrial’. Buyers of animal nutritional and care products tend to be loyal to labels they trust, so incorporating easily recognisable branding elements into product packaging is essential.

With over a decade of experience providing packaging for the pharmaceutical sector, CoLab stays up-to-date on the latest regulatory guidelines to ensure all of our packaging is 100% safety-compliant.

We use the highest quality technology to achieve branding that is consistently accurate and replicable for our global partners, guaranteeing customers can recognise your label throughout a variety of SKUs worldwide.

Serialisation

In addition to the stringent safety requirements placed on animal health packaging, serialisation is another regulation pharmaceutical products must follow. It allows governments to track the sale and distribution of controlled substances, as well as quickly locate and remove defective products in the event of a recall.

Serialisation also provides several benefits to the animal health industry, such as:

Identification of counterfeit products → prevents licensing & insurance loss.
A better view of your supply chain → track inventory levels & predict future needs.
Monitoring drug expiration dates → alerts animal caretakers via time stamps.
Improved product tracking → avoids shortages of critical animal care supplies.
Assessing product performance → supports ideal product placement

Unfortunately, these advantages can be lost or even turn into headaches when companies don’t partner with an experienced packaging provider. While serialisation is neither new nor difficult to most suppliers, the issue of storing, analysing, and applying the collected data effectively is the most common caveat our clients mention.

At CoLab, we approach serialisation as a vital design component to animal health product packaging. Our HP Indigo Digital Press executes single-pass security printing, combining security elements, substrates, inks, and design software to efficiently deliver end-to-end security, so you know your products are safe and your data is accurate.

Personalisation and Customisation

Farmers, wildlife specialists and pet owners have had to administer medicine and treatments without the help of veterinary professionals for decades.

When the pandemic replaced in-person interactions with doctors and pharmacists, pharmaceutical packaging needed to find a way to provide more in-depth instructions—something the animal health industry saw instant potential in.

Post-pandemic, personalisation and customisation are being adopted at a record pace in the animal health industry, but printing a range of versioned SKUs in small amounts can complicate operations and rack up production costs—fast.

CoLab has been pleased to provide tailored solutions for our clients in animal health product packaging. Not only can we produce multiple versions of the same product with a customised QR code, but we can do it in a single run.

That’s right: When you choose a packaging partner that can execute multiple customised SKUs in a single print run, your business saves valuable time and money, and you never have to worry about getting any last-minute orders out in a pinch.

Sustainability

It’s true: the pharmaceutical industry has been notoriously late on the green scene.

A spike in production during the pandemic brought excessive packaging waste and excessive profits to the attention of an increasingly eco-friendly consumer base. The pharmaceutical industry had to take the issue of sustainability seriously—and this was especially true for animal pharmaceuticals and health products.

Wildlife and livestock are directly affected by waste and pollution. Veterinarians who go through large amounts of products and animal caretakers working in remote locations all want options that make disposal simple and uncomplicated. Pet owners typically love the planet as much as they do their animal friends (and shop accordingly).

Making the best impact on this market means addressing both your packaging materials and production methods. To do this, animal health product producers must team up with packaging partners that can offer them a wide range of eco-friendly solutions.

CoLab packaging does this in two ways:

Turning to carbon-neutral digital printing
Offering a variety of sustainable materials and vegan inks

Our extensive experience in creating sustainable packaging allows us to quickly determine which practices are both feasible for your business and impactful on your market, ensuring that both your business and the planet enjoy the maximum benefits. Read our commitment to sustainability for more on this.

Prototyping

In an industry that moves as fast as pharmaceuticals, finding the time to hash out package prototyping can be almost as difficult as producing a final design.

After years of listening to clients bemoan past experiences, we’ve come to recognise that this initial phase of planning is fundamentally crucial to the overall success of any project. Here’s what to look for when scoping out a potential packaging partner.

Provides both online and in-office consultations
Offers a variety of prototyping packages
Quickly narrows down feasible options
Produces a detailed list of various iterations
Walks clients through the design process and premises
Sends prospective clients home with a sample design

We offer this all (and more) — connecting with you virtually or in-person to take the time to hear your ideas, pinpoint the ideal solution, and experiment with the details.

Our purpose-built LAB is the perfect backdrop for maximising productivity—allowing us to iterate, design, and test run in real-time, assuring you enjoy the greatest value in your time with us.

We allow you to follow every step of the process and test your own ideas along the way.

For a more immersive experience, check out our Incubator Days, where we partner up with business hubs and networks for a fun day of learning all about the basics of prototyping as well as the connection between branding, CX and packaging. It includes: