PIN Concession for Printing, Publishing, Distribution, Marketing and Selling of the British Pharmacopoeia

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (the Agency) is an Executive Agency of the Department of Health. We protect and improve the health of millions of people every day through the effective regulation of medicines and medical devices, underpinned by science and research.

The British Pharmacopoeia (BP) is the official collection of standards for UK medicinal products and pharmaceutical substances. It is produced by the British Pharmacopoeia Commission Secretariat of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, in accordance with regulation 317(1) of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 and makes an important contribution to public health by setting publicly available standards for the quality of medicines. Now used in over 100 countries, the BP remains an essential reference for all individuals and organisations working within pharmaceutical research and development, manufacture and testing around the globe. The BP is published annually with three in-year updates, currently in both hardcopy and electronic formats; the latter is available as a download product as well as accessed via a single-user licence or a multi-user licence arrangement. In addition, there is the requirement for the publication of the British Approved Names (BAN) which provides the official, non-proprietary, or generic names given to pharmaceutical substances, published annually.

The Agency requires the appointment of a service provider to be responsible for the Printing, Publishing, Distribution, Marketing and Selling of the BP and BAN publications. A core part of the requirement is the provision and maintenance of a website, which operates as a portal to access the electronic formats of the BP, as well as acting as a source of added value material and a sales platform for the BP chemical reference standards, orders for which are fulfilled by the Agency. The link to the current website is https://www.pharmacopoeia.com/

The service provider would have responsibility for business development and marketing of the product, with the strategic approval of the Agency, and also shall be expected to invest in the services to deliver continuous improvement and innovation throughout the life of the contract. The service provider will also need to carefully manage sales and distribution of BP publications to our global user base which is currently conducted through established reseller networks.

The Agency will publish this tender late Jan-early Feb 2021 for the award of a concession contract to one service provider to provide these services as a concessionaire; collaborations with other organisations to bring together the range of expertise would be acceptable.

We will be holding a supplier engagement event on 09 December 20 10.00 - 12.00 via a MS Teams video conference. Please email purchasing@mhra.gov.uk if you would like to attend.

Link to full PIN https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:555007-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML

Additional information:

We will be holding a supplier engagement event on 09 December 2020 10.00 - 12.00 via a MS Teams video conference to discuss with potential suppliers the requirement and service expectations, and innovations that can be brought into a future contract. We will also allow time for a Q and A. If you are interested in attending, please email purchasing@mhra.gov.uk with details of your attendees - please include the name of the company and the names and email addresses for your proposed attendees (quoting BP Event in the email heading).

The link to the full content of our PIN is provided above. There is no further information available at present. We will be using our e-procurement solution https://mhra.bravosolution.co.uk for the next stage of the process.

Please note: This is a concession contract so the concessionaire shall retain the revenue from the service/sales as its fees minus the payment of agreed royalty fees to the Agency.