PHARMACEUTICALS looking for reliable suppliers , not necessarily the cheapest ones . “ Now we need to define reliability . There are reliable suppliers in Asia too but you need to think about transport , there are a lot of critical timelines and I think we need to talk again about the cost of this reliability in supply chain ,” Späne said . This , in her view , is not just a matter of dual-sourcing but also the whole system of safety of supply chain and the value this offers to the customer . Thinking about this changed the whole mindset of how Siegfried will go about supply chain in the future .
Critical shortages
The emphasis was slightly different from Sandra Cernick , president and COO at Pressure Chemical . Her firm is a relatively small US-based speciality custom chemical company that supplies high-value critical chemicals in small volumes for scaleup , essentially on a first-come-firstserved basis . “ We are competing with very large buyers everywhere in the world and we are probably placed last when it comes to getting our materials ,” Cernick said . To address this , the company has bought a piece of land adjacent to its pilot plant to build a high-tech warehouse , enabling it to bring in materials long before it anticipates using them . Waltermire added that the constraints on pharma companies , right down to a shortage of singleuse bags for parenterals , are “ tremendous ”. Trying to run clinical trials during COVID in the face of such supply disruptions has been a massive challenge . “ It ’ s actually a beautiful thing that the CDMO side and the ‘ buy ’ side are pretty aligned on supply chain risk assessment on many different dimensions , and are looking at what the working capital is impact and the net cost of having multiple source ,” he said . All agreed that the last years had seen unprecedented shortages of basic equipment . In part , as with Siegfried ’ s difficulties in finding filters
and other equipment for vaccine development , this reflected the sudden demand for COVID vaccines , but it had a knock-on effect on already stressed markets , going down as far as drums at Curia , and single-use bags for parenterals , even syringes and vials , at Madrigal . “ The number of things I am paying up front for which I historically didn ’ t is very large ,” Waltermire said . A key short-term question for Siegfried in the short term is what will happen after the summer , when vaccine uptake tends to be low . Should the company overstock now in anticipation ? Neither Siegfried nor its own suppliers have answers to that as yet , Späne said .
Greening the supply chain
The industry ’ s need to reduce its carbon footprint and make its molecules greener is challenging enough given the timelines and cost pressure , Waltermire said , so what efforts can CDMOs make to ‘ green ’ their customers ? “ Our customers don ’ t just ask us to be green , they want their whole supply chain to be green ,” Späne said . Thus CDMOs have had to pay attention to their own suppliers ,
Above : Waltermire – I am paying up front for many things I never had to before
Right : Cernick – Pressure Chemical has built a new warehouse a task that will become more and more difficult . An even bigger question is showing patients their medicines are being produced in a green , sustainable way . Siegfried is getting pressure from its customers and regulators but not from the patient , which is very different from what happens in the food industry . Will there eventually be a trademark that will prove to the patient that his medicine is green ? “ I think this is has been missing from the debate for a long time ,” Boyce replied . Although SK Biotek is already on a long sustainability journey and customers require it to be in line with their plans on this , she had never heard of a patient asking for it . Perhaps the industry should address the issue proactively by engaging with patients ? Kaus was emphatic that the chemical industry can never actually be green . However , over the last couple of years , it has worked intensively on saving energy , solvent recovery and other aspects of green chemistry . Patients will never asked about such things , but people need to know that the chemicals industry is actually doing a lot to address its intrinsically ‘ dirty ’ nature .
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