InnovaPuglia Closes Lot 47 of Puglia Radiopharmaceuticals Supply Convention Without Award Due to Change in Needs

Introduction

InnovaPuglia S.p.A., the regional centralised purchasing body for the Apulia (Puglia) Region, has published an award notice for Lot 47 of its telematic open procedure for the supply of radiopharmaceuticals (radiofarmaci) to the healthcare companies of the Puglia Regional Health Service, recording that the competition for this lot was closed without selecting a winner, with no contract awarded. The stated reason for non-award is a decision of the buyer due to a change in needs. No bids were received for this lot.

The notice covers only Lot 47 of a wider procurement programme (procedure reference: 15, RADIOFARMACI) with a total estimated value of €139,455,080.14, structured as a Convenzione (regional supply convention) under Article 26 of Law 23 December 1999 No. 488, the Italian legislative framework establishing centralised purchasing conventions for the public administration. Lot 47's estimated value was €306,340.00.

Why This Notice Matters

A void lot notice, particularly one citing a change in the buyer's needs rather than a competitive failure, carries important intelligence for the radiopharmaceutical supply sector and for businesses tracking InnovaPuglia's procurement programme for the Puglia Regional Health Service.

Radiopharmaceuticals are a uniquely time-sensitive and clinically specialised category within hospital medicines procurement. Unlike most pharmaceutical products, radiopharmaceuticals have very short half-lives, many decay from useful radioactivity to effectively inert within hours or a small number of days and their clinical use is tied directly to the specific diagnostic imaging or therapeutic protocols deployed at the nuclear medicine departments of individual hospitals. A single change in a clinical protocol, an update to the diagnostic pathway for a specific condition or a decision to discontinue use of a particular isotope or tracer at the hospital level can render an entire lot in a multi-lot radiopharmaceutical framework effectively redundant, precisely the category of change that the "change in needs" justification is designed to capture in EU procurement law.

The combination of zero bids received and a "change in needs" closure for Lot 47 also raises a question that bidders and market observers in the radiopharmaceutical supply sector will recognise: whether the change in needs occurred before or after the tender's closing date and whether the absence of bids itself prompted the authority to formally record the lot as closed on this basis rather than as deserto.

For the broader Italian radiopharmaceutical market, this notice is also significant as a transparency disclosure from one of Italy's larger regional centralised health purchasing programmes, confirming that InnovaPuglia's convention framework for the Puglia health system's nuclear medicine supply needs extends to a multi-lot programme valued at over €139 million, one of the more substantial regional radiopharmaceutical procurement programmes in Italy.

Contract Timeline

Contract Overview

The wider procedure of which Lot 47 forms part is described in the notice as:

"Gara telematica a procedura aperta per la conclusione di una Convenzione ex art. 26 della legge 23 dicembre 1999 n. 488 avente ad oggetto l'affidamento della fornitura di radiofarmaci, altri materiali e servizi connessi per le Aziende del Servizio Sanitario della Regione Puglia."

In plain English: a telematic open procedure for the conclusion of a centralised supply convention under Article 26 of Law 488/1999, for the award of the supply of radiopharmaceuticals, related materials and associated services for the healthcare companies of the Puglia Regional Health Service.

The Convenzione instrument used here is the Italian centralised purchasing mechanism most closely associated with Consip S.p.A. at the national level and with regional purchasing bodies like InnovaPuglia at the regional level. Under a Convenzione established under Article 26 of Law 488/1999, the purchasing body concludes a framework supply agreement with one or more suppliers and individual healthcare companies within the regional health service can then place call-off orders against that convention without conducting their own competitive procedures. For radiopharmaceuticals, where clinical specificity, short shelf-life logistics and cold chain requirements make individual hospital tendering practically very difficult, the Convenzione model provides a structured, centrally negotiated supply channel that individual nuclear medicine departments can access directly for their specific product needs.

The programme structure, with Lot 47 sitting within a 47+ lot framework covering the full range of radiopharmaceutical products, related materials and associated services required across the Puglia health system's nuclear medicine departments, reflects the product-by-product lot division typical of large-scale Italian pharmaceutical conventions, where each lot corresponds to a specific active substance, isotope, tracer or associated product category.

Key Contract Details, Lot 47

About the Contracting Authority, InnovaPuglia S.p.A.

InnovaPuglia S.p.A. (Registration: 06837080727, Via delle Violette 14, Valenzano, Bari 70010, NUTS ITF47) is the in-house company of the Puglia Region responsible for the development and management of innovation and information and communication technology projects and, critically for this procurement, for the centralised purchasing activities of the Puglia Regional Health Service and the regional administration. As Puglia's designated regional centralised purchasing body, InnovaPuglia performs for the Apulian health system a role equivalent to what Consip performs nationally, concluding Convenzioni and framework agreements that the individual Aziende Sanitarie Locali (local health authorities) and hospital companies within the Puglia health service can draw upon without running their own separate competitive procedures.

The radiopharmaceuticals convention (procedure 15, RADIOFARMACI) is one of the more complex healthcare product procurements InnovaPuglia manages, given the highly specialised and time-sensitive nature of radiopharmaceutical products, the requirement for cold chain and short-half-life logistics management and the clinical specificity of the individual product lots that must be structured to match the precise diagnostic and therapeutic protocols deployed across the nuclear medicine departments of Puglia's hospital network. Procurement enquiries are directed to innovapuglia@pec.rupar.puglia.it; telephone 0804670111; contact point Alessia Manzari. Buyer profile: www.innova.puglia.it.

An important institutional feature of this specific notice is the presence of ANAC, Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione (Registration: 97584460584, Roma) in the role of procurement service provider. ANAC appears here in a registration and oversight capacity rather than as a contracting party, reflecting Italy's requirement under D.Lgs. 36/2023 and earlier legislation for procurement notices to be published to and registered through ANAC's Banca Dati Nazionale dei Contratti Pubblici (National Public Contracts Database), which ANAC administers as part of its anti-corruption and procurement transparency mandate.

Review of procurement decisions by InnovaPuglia falls under the jurisdiction of TAR Puglia, Bari (Registration: 93012720723, Bari 70121, ITF47. Email: tarba-segrprotocolloamm@ga-cert.it. Tel: 0805733111), with review deadlines specified in the capitolato (technical and contractual specification) for the procedure.

Understanding the "Change in Needs" Non-Award Justification

Under EU public procurement law, specifically as interpreted through the provisions of Directive 2014/24/EU and its Italian implementing legislation, contracting authorities may close a tender procedure without awarding a contract for a limited set of justified reasons. One of these is a material change in the contracting authority's needs that renders the original procurement object no longer required or appropriate in its originally specified form. In the TED standard reporting schema, this is recorded as chan-need, the code used in this notice.

For radiopharmaceuticals specifically, a change in needs is a credible and clinically grounded justification in circumstances including:

• A decision by one or more of the Puglia Regional Health Service's healthcare companies to discontinue the clinical protocol or diagnostic procedure that uses the specific radiopharmaceutical product covered by Lot 47.
• An update to national or regional clinical guidelines that removes or replaces a previously used radiopharmaceutical tracer with a different isotope or diagnostic agent.
• A change in the supply chain infrastructure for a specific short-half-life isotope, for example, a cyclotron or radiopharmacy closure or a change in distribution arrangements, that makes the originally specified product impractical to supply within the technical parameters of the lot specification.
• A regulatory change affecting the authorisation status or clinical indication of the specific radiopharmaceutical product covered by this lot.

The fact that zero bids were received, combined with the change in needs closure, suggests that the market did not find the lot sufficiently specified or commercially viable to bid on and that the authority's recognition of a changed need may have followed from the failure to attract any bids rather than preceding it. This is a pattern that can arise in highly specialised pharmaceutical procurement where the clinical requirement that originally generated the lot specification has evolved faster than the procurement timeline, creating a misalignment between the specified product and the market's current capability or the health system's current clinical need by the time the tender closes.

Additional Procurement Facts

• Legal basis: EU Directive 2014/24/EU on public procurement; Article 26, Law 23 December 1999 No. 488 (Italian centralised purchasing legislation)
• Instrument: Convenzione (regional centralised supply convention), distinct from a standard framework agreement under Italian procurement law
• GPA coverage: No, Lot 47 is not covered by the WTO Government Procurement Agreement
• EU funding: No, not financed with EU funds
• Bids received (Lot 47): 0 (electronic), 0 (SME), 0 (inadmissible), 0 (abnormally low price)
• Notice version: 02, this is a corrected/updated version of the original notice
• Procurement service provider: ANAC, Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione (in capacity as national public contracts database administrator)
• Review deadlines: As specified in the capitolato (procurement specification document)

Market and Industry Perspective

Italy's hospital radiopharmaceutical market is a niche but commercially significant segment of the broader Italian hospital medicines sector, with demand driven by the nuclear medicine departments of large university hospitals, regional reference centres and increasingly by outpatient diagnostic imaging facilities across the national health service. The major product categories within this market, PET tracers such as fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) and various PSMA-targeted agents, SPECT radiopharmaceuticals and therapeutic radioisotopes for conditions including thyroid cancer and neuroendocrine tumours, are typically procured through centralised regional frameworks of the type InnovaPuglia operates, rather than through individual hospital competitive procedures, given the logistical complexity of supplying products with half-lives measured in hours.

InnovaPuglia's multi-lot Convenzione structure for the Puglia health system, at €139.46 million across the full programme, is one of Italy's larger regional radiopharmaceutical procurement exercises, reflecting both the size of the Puglia health service (serving approximately four million inhabitants across five provinces) and the range of nuclear medicine capabilities maintained across Puglia's hospital network. Suppliers active in this market, including both large pharmaceutical companies with dedicated radiopharmacy divisions and specialist regional radiopharmacy operators, will typically participate in multiple lots within a programme of this structure, given the product specificity of each lot.

The void Lot 47 is a relatively minor component of the overall programme by value (€306,340 against a total of €139.46 million, approximately 0.22 percent of programme value) and its closure is unlikely to materially affect the commercial dynamics of the programme as a whole. Its significance lies primarily in the market intelligence it provides about which specific product category within the Puglia radiopharmaceutical programme is no longer being actively procured, intelligence relevant to competing suppliers and clinical stakeholders tracking changes in regional nuclear medicine procurement patterns.

Economic Significance

At €306,340, Lot 47 represents a very small fraction of the overall €139.46 million radiopharmaceutical convention programme. The economic significance of this specific notice lies not in the lot's value but in what it reveals about the overall programme's scale and structure: a 47-plus-lot, €139 million centralised convention for the radiopharmaceutical supply of an entire region's health service represents a substantial and sustained procurement programme for the nuclear medicine and radiopharmacy supply sector in southern Italy. The individual lot result, void, zero bids, change in needs, is a single data point within that programme, but its formal publication on TED contributes to the overall procurement transparency record that InnovaPuglia is required to maintain for the Puglia health service's purchasing activity.

Future Procurement Opportunities

Radiopharmaceutical suppliers and market observers tracking InnovaPuglia's procurement programme should monitor:

• Award notices for the remaining lots of procedure 15, RADIOFARMACI, which will collectively document the full competitive outcome of InnovaPuglia's €139 million radiopharmaceutical convention for the Puglia health service.
• Any new or replacement tender notice for Lot 47's product category, if InnovaPuglia subsequently determines that the change in needs was temporary or partial and that a revised specification for the same or a related product is warranted.
• Broader InnovaPuglia healthcare procurement publications, the regional body also manages Convenzioni and framework agreements for medical devices, diagnostic equipment, hospital supplies and other healthcare product categories serving the Puglia health service.

Opportunities for Suppliers

The void Lot 47 result, while not itself representing a commercial opportunity, highlights the following considerations for radiopharmaceutical suppliers engaged with or considering engagement in Italian regional health procurement:

• Monitoring the full lot-by-lot outcome of InnovaPuglia's procedure 15, RADIOFARMACI will provide a comprehensive picture of which specific radiopharmaceutical products are being actively procured for the Puglia health system and at what estimated values.
• Direct engagement with InnovaPuglia's procurement team during market consultation phases before future convention procedures is the most effective way to ensure that product specifications are technically appropriate and commercially viable, reducing the risk of void lots arising from specification misalignment.
• The Convenzione model used by InnovaPuglia means that winning a convention lot provides access to the call-off orders of all Puglia Regional Health Service healthcare companies without requiring separate procurement exercises, a significant commercial advantage in a region where nuclear medicine procurement is distributed across multiple hospital and diagnostic entities.

What Businesses Should Watch

• Additional InnovaPuglia award notices for lots within procedure 15, RADIOFARMACI, which will complete the picture of the regional convention's competitive outcomes.
• Any future InnovaPuglia procurement notice that references a new or revised lot for the product category previously covered by Lot 47, if the change in needs subsequently reverses or a related product requirement emerges.
• ANAC's Banca Dati Nazionale dei Contratti Pubblici for the complete administrative record of this procedure, including any documentation of the procurement service's oversight activities relating to this notice.

ItalyTenders.com Procurement Intelligence

ItalyTenders.com tracks contract award notices, void lot publications and procurement opportunities from Italian regional centralised purchasing bodies and national authorities, as well as EU-level procurement published through the TED portal. This notice confirms the formal closure of Lot 47 of InnovaPuglia's €139 million radiopharmaceutical supply convention for the Puglia Regional Health Service, a void lot resulting from a change in the buyer's needs and attracting zero bids, within a broader multi-lot programme that represents one of Italy's larger regional nuclear medicine procurement frameworks.

Supplier Takeaways

• InnovaPuglia S.p.A. has published a void lot notice for Lot 47 of procedure 15, RADIOFARMACI, with no winner selected and the competition formally closed due to a change in the buyer's needs.
• Zero bids of any type were received for Lot 47 (estimated value €306,340), covering a specific radiopharmaceutical product for the Puglia Regional Health Service.
• The wider procedure is structured as a Convenzione under Article 26 of Law 488/1999 for the supply of radiopharmaceuticals, related materials and associated services to all healthcare companies of the Puglia health service, with a total estimated programme value of €139,455,080.14 across all lots.
• This is version 02 of the notice, a corrected/updated version of the original award notice and was dispatched to TED on 30 July 2026 and published 03 August 2026.
• Review jurisdiction lies with TAR Puglia, Bari.

Key Takeaways

• InnovaPuglia S.p.A., Puglia's regional centralised purchasing body, has closed Lot 47 of its €139.46 million radiopharmaceuticals Convenzione (procedure 15, RADIOFARMACI) without awarding a contract, citing a change in the buyer's needs, the only lot reported in this notice.
• No bids were received for this lot (estimated value €306,340) and the competition is definitively closed rather than re-opened.
• The procurement is structured as a Convenzione under Article 26 of Law 488/1999, not a standard framework agreement, governed by Directive 2014/24/EU, not GPA-covered and not EU-funded.
• ANAC appears as procurement service provider in its national public contracts database administrator capacity.

Conclusion

InnovaPuglia's formal closure of Lot 47 of its Puglia radiopharmaceutical supply convention without award, citing a change in the buyer's needs and recording zero bids received, is a legally required transparency publication that, while modest in its immediate commercial implications, contributes meaningfully to the documentary record of a €139 million regional healthcare convention and to the market intelligence available to suppliers and clinical stakeholders tracking the nuclear medicine procurement landscape of one of Italy's larger regional health services. The void lot's formal publication through TED, in a corrected second version of the notice, reflects InnovaPuglia's obligations under both Italian national procurement law and EU public procurement transparency requirements, completing the official procurement record for this specific product category regardless of the outcome.

Source: EU Official Journal, Contract Award Notice 536635-2026, OJ S 147/2026, published 03 August 2026. Contracting authority: InnovaPuglia S.p.A.