SUPPLY AND LOGISTICS Cutting the carbon footprint
of pharma’s supply chain The industry needs to target its entire value chain if it wants to make a real dent in its carbon emissions, writes Darcy Jimenez.
P
harma, like every other industry, has an impact on the environment – and, in the face of a climate crisis, it has a harm. In a recent GlobalData survey, 43% of respondents considered the environment sector to address.
As members of an industry that emits more greenhouse gases than the automotive sector, drug companies must make a concerted effort to reduce the carbon footprint associated with getting their medicines to patients – but how?
Starting sustainably Every stage of the pharmaceutical supply chain has a carbon footprint – right down to the very beginning, where the raw materials for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are sourced. Jing-Ke Weng is co-founder of Double
Rainbow Biosciences, a sustainable biotech dedicated to developing new therapeutics with minimal impact on the environment. He says the manufacture of APIs for small-molecule drugs relies largely on chemicals derived from petroleum, a fossil fuel. There are many energy-intensive steps in the chemical synthesis of raw materials and solvents, Weng explains. And the amount of carbon it takes to make these molecules is usually not calculated, he says. Double Rainbow’s long-term vision is to
replace fossil fuel-reliant manufacturing with methods based on synthetic biology and inspired by the chemical processes seen in nature. Weng’s group is trying to assemble microbial enzymes from diverse sources in a particular manner to make a molecule that can be incorporated into a new or existing drug. “Conventionally, these compounds have
to come from natural resources, but now we have new technology to entirely replace that with a fermentation-based method, which is a major step,” he says.
Mitigating manufacturing’s impact product is another carbon-intensive stage of a pharma company’s supply chain. One of the most effective ways of reducing the carbon emissions associated with drug production is to adopt continuous batch manufacturing that combines multiple separate production stages into one single, continuous production line. In 2014, US biotech Amgen opened a $200m biomanufacturing plant incorporating Compared with a traditional manufacturing facility, Amgen’s plant produces 69% less company that plans to be carbon neutral in its operations by 2027. French healthcare opening a continuous manufacturing plant in Massachusetts, US, which it said would generate 80% less carbon emissions than “Continuous process manufacturing has
been evolving rapidly over the last six to 10 years,” says Scott Lawson, a partner at professional services network PwC. “The focus has been on small-molecule manufacturing principles, and big pharma has made investments in this space.”
Now that is being translated into what Lawson calls mid-tier pharma companies as well. “We’ve seen the number of authorised products [made with continuous manufacturing] increase over the last two to
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