44 TWENTYFOURSEVENBIOPHARMA Issue 2 / June 2025 GLATT PHARMACEUTICAL SERVICES Glatt Pharmaceutical Services supports pharmaceutical and biotech companies through every stage of drug product development. This article – written after CDMO Live in Rotterdam – focuses on the event’s two increasingly nonnegotiable imperatives for the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector: sustainability and continuous processing. First, as supply chains face increasing regulatory scrutiny and cost pressure, environmental impact is no longer an abstract concern, it is becoming a contract-level criterion. Large innovator companies are already excluding suppliers that cannot document science-based carbon-reduction targets. At the same time, continuous manufacturing is gaining renewed relevance, not as a theoretical ideal, but as a response to practical constraints: energy usage, solvent loss, long lead times and batch inconsistency. However, speakers at CDMO Live issued a clear warning: the adoption of continuous technologies must be justified by real benefits. Implementing advanced systems without a corresponding gain in efficiency or sustainability risks becoming an expensive misstep. Sustainability strategies There are several strategies currently being employed to eliminate idle phases and generate auditable sustainability metrics in pharmaceutical manufacturing: - Green solvent management (e.g. closed-loop solvent recovery systems to minimise volatile emissions). - Energy optimisation (e.g. heat-pump-assisted fluid-bed dryers to reduce thermal load). - Water and wastewater management (e.g. counter-current CIP systems to conserve water and reduce effluent volumes). - Material efficiency (e.g. high drug-load formulations that reduce excipient use and batch size). - Continuous processing (to minimise downtime and improve process predictability). - Digitalisation (e.g. predictive analytics, digital twins and cloud-based batch records for enhanced traceability). As a CDMO specialized in drug product formulation and fluid bed processes, Glatt has developed strategies for material selection,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjY2OTA4MA==