Silvia Forroova, Informa Markets director – partnerships and sustainability for CPHI Barcelona, explains how the show aims to be a catalyst for sustainability within pharma.
Informa Markets’ leading global community for pharmaceutical professionals, CPHI, has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, both in terms of visitor numbers and market expansion. It has reached new markets in Asia, Europe, North America, and is preparing for a launch in the Middle East.
One area that CPHI is particularly passionate about is sustainability. Of course, the pharma industry faces significant challenges and is not inherently sustainable. It is a complex issue that requires honest conversations and impactful measures.
Exhibitions, venues and event organisers in the last few years have, rightly, become increasingly focussed on how we can still deliver world-class services and events for customers, but at the same time, reduce the impact we have on the places we visit and our overall environmental footprint. For a large-scale international event like CPHI Barcelona, this takes on even greater focus. Last year, over half of our attendees travelled by air, so it becomes more important than ever to help them make every mile count productively.
One of the best ways to ensure our events are having a positive carbon impact is, of course, to ensure they deliver value to the industries we serve, for example by reducing the number of meetings they may have to take throughout the year. Already, with such an international industry and supply chain as pharma, we are hopefully positively contributing as there is nowhere else in the world that so many contacts can meet simultaneously. In fact, over a third of attendees last year told us attending CPHI meant they took fewer flights throughout the year.
For the journey
Making your events deliver value is a crucial aspect as we begin to look at sustainability, and too often overlooked. But we are also looking to the direct reductions on site we can make, and this is where our recent journey really begins.
The first step was to identify ‘low hanging fruit’ that would be easier to address and what we might need to work towards for our longer-term objectives, as part of our strategic roadmap for the portfolio. We looked at other events we admired and tried to take on the learnings from their best practices – there are plenty of lessons to take from our peers and beyond. And finally, we spoke with our exhibitors and attendees to see what is important to them and how we can help them reduce their impact.
For context, CPHI Barcelona is the world’s largest pharma event, and our exhibitors are the supply chain partners making the ingredients, the finished drugs, the packaging and machinery of many of the medicines saving lives globally. Pharma is inherently a socially responsible industry thanks to the lives it saves.
What is often not well understood outside the sector is that, unfortunately, the manufacturing and development of these much-needed drugs does often come at some environmental cost – chiefly because of the way drugs are approved [as quickly as is possible meaning production methods are not always optimised]. In fact, pharma is one of the most polluting industries globally and has a larger carbon footprint than even the automotive industry. A complex supply chain and strict regulations have historically meant a significant environmental footprint, however, in the last decade the industry has embarked on a massive global drive to try and improve.
In areas like pharma packaging we already see tremendous improvements – particularly in Europe, where we have been pleased to see our event, Pharmapack, is widely acknowledged to have been instrumental in accelerating this change.
Which brings me full circle back to CPHI Barcelona and how we can piece together this complex web and make the biggest positive contribution we can. We have been taking great strides to make the event as sustainable and carbon neutral as possible, but we are not content to pause here. For our team sustainability is very much a continual improvement philosophy and we are following the examples of Pharmapack and helping be a key facilitator of global change within the pharma industry itself.
Split focus
We have split our focus. Many of our sustainability efforts are centred around activities to improve the solutions we provide when we host out events, but beyond this – and perhaps ultimately the bigger impact – we are exploring how we can be the catalyst of change for attendees, our exhibitors, and the wider pharma industry.
We are striving to be the central point of debate on these key issues, from sharing learnings and case studies at our events and online, to introducing prospective working groups on essential areas. With upwards of 40,000 executives expected at Barcelona, alongside
our global network of 470,000+ pharma professionals, we understood that we can have a central role to play in the shift towards greener technologies. We see this as three-year+ transformation within our business – but our goal is to be one of those case study exhibitions that others then look to.
I would like to compliment Fira Barcelona who have really bought into this. So, partner with your local networks, with your venues and exhibitors.
Big picture
CPHI Barcelona has been taking ambitious steps that build towards a big picture. We have looked at easier fixes with full recyclable carpets, and making sure we have sustainable stand builders, buying carbon offset credits for the event and taking into account the amount and types of energy used on site. Going further, we are looking to partner with the local tourism body and introducing a list of sustainable restaurants and even eco taxis – we do however promote public transport first.
We also work with local food suppliers. This not only lowers the carbon impact, but also contributes to the local economies we visit. Similarly, and perhaps now bridging our work into pharma, we have also looked at what benefits we can give to the local industries within our host cities – so for example we have introduced a new Start-Up Market for early-stage local companies to access the global industries we serve, with support from local government organisations. That enabling of the local industry within a global event is a model I would encourage others to follow.
Already we are looking at widening our agendas. We are also thinking about ‘closed working groups’ and case studies, remaining conscious of industry sensitives and how we can share knowledge in an environment that safeguards IP.
Similarly, we have also brought about learnings and challenges from different regions to explore how the industry can improve at a global level – for example, we will bring in learnings from Europe and the US if these are relevant to accelerate change in India or China. Our great strength is the ability to bring these global actors together and, by hosting a large sustainability programme, theatre or track at our events, we are providing a tremendous resource in accelerating adoption. Not least because there are already groups out there driving change – sometimes struggling for reach – and we give them the platform to talk direct to the manufacturers and supply partners so that they can educate on the tools needed to change.
The final aspect is that, once you begin, you quickly find allies. We have introduced sponsorship packages for key sustainability exhibitor partners to fund carbon offsetting at the event and we of course are more than happy to exchange our marketing power as a thank you.
I am enthused by the response we have had– our role is now to bring all these great partners together and to collectively bring about changes. For something global like sustainability in a complex industry like pharma, with different regulators… event organisers are incredibly well placed to be catalysts of change. The big take away is we have only just started scratching the surface, and my prediction is we won’t be alone in driving sustainable change in industry through events.
