SGD Pharma celebrates the United Nations International Year of Glass 2022

SGD Pharma exhibits at Pharmapack 2022

SGD Pharma will exhibit at Pharmapack, from 18-19 May in Paris on booths B68 & B70. The company continues to focus on its innovation and will spotlight a succession of achievements on its booth and beyond. Come and talk to SGD Pharma on the booth, or to make an appointment, contact marketing@sgdgroup.com

SGD Pharma is the global leader in the supply of pharmaceutical-grade molded glass vials, being supplier of choice to TOP 10 pharma, and many biopharma and veterinary leaders.  In late 2021, ownership of SGD Pharma passed to new shareholders PAI Partners, enabling the leadership team to look forward and focus on new areas of growth, investment, and innovation.

Spotlight on SGD Pharma 2022 achievements

SGD Pharma puts a strong focus on innovation as a key driver of our continuous improvement program to bring higher quality and services to our global pharmaceutical customers. Innovation is also a key driver to penetrate further new markets and defend our strong leadership positions in molded glass. As we look towards an exciting 2022, there are three key pillars of the business that we are focusing our efforts into, in order to support our customers’ needs throughout this year and beyond: R&D & Investments, Product Innovations, People.

Product Innovations, R&D & Investments, People

For example, last year we injected €31 million into renovating our Sucy-en-Brie production site, which included the complete rebuild and upgrade of one furnace, the modification of the building itself, full revamping of the ISO 8 clean rooms, next generation IS machines, and the installation of the most advanced technologies available for automatic inspection. Collectively, our SQLM and Sucy plants produce 4 million molded glass vials per day, so maintaining and upgrading our sites is crucial to our business and to meeting customers’ expectations.

We have also recently upgraded our furnace in our Vemula plant, which produces both molded and tubular Type I glass vials for parenteral applications. India has been a huge source of growth for SGD Pharma, with our local market share in molded and tubular vials growing from 10% to 40%.

Manufacturing excellence helps us to continue to service customers and keep their supply chains in place, to enable them to bring drugs to market quickly. This is a huge responsibility, and also means that our role is contributing to global health and addresses several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Innovation is a group matter, and for the last five years, SGD Pharma has regularly increased its dedicated resources for innovation, not only for R&D, but also for related marketing, quality, and engineering projects. We have an innovation roadmap in place that is both short and long-term in its vision and takes into account enhancing our existing products and services, as well as expanding into newer areas.

In 2022 we have reached the Gold status in the Ecovadis rating for corporate responsibility. This is very important for our customers’ procurement and supply chain goals; by operating at this level SGD Pharma helps our customers to excel in sustainability too. This rating is the visible proof of our continued efforts for a healthier future.

Sustainability in healthcare and pharmaceutical packaging is a top priority for drug manufacturers and consumers now, and we feel that our Gold EcoVadis rating emphasizes SGD Pharma’s dedication to a more environmentally friendly future. We have seen just how important the role of glass is in society as a sustainable material through the International Year of Glass 2022, which we have proudly sponsored. Our new CSR report will be published this year, spotlighting the latest advances across the company in our endless quest to lead from the front in sustainability, reducing our carbon footprint and adopting industry-leading practices.

SGD Pharma is a global manufacturing company, and we track our employment statistics as part of our annual sustainability report and claim a wide and diverse workforce with an increasing percent of female employees. The percentage of our workforce that is female is increasing globally, despite us being a large manufacturing organization.

We have also significantly increased our marketing and R&D teams over the last five years, reflecting our leadership position.

In the 18 months to 2022, we have made significant product introductions to support the needs of both our customers and the wider market. We made a strong start in 2021 with the addition of our Ensiemo range, developed especially for the cannabidiol (CBD) market. The recent introduction of Ensiemo for CBD (including beauty and nutraceutical applications) also brings us closer to other markets and enables our innovations in regulated, approved, and compliant glass for pharma packaging to be adopted across more industries. 

To this end, we have focused efforts on improving the customer experience by segmenting our product propositions more specifically to their needs, and this enables us to improve their supply chain, making it easier for customers to access products that meet their bespoke needs. As a high-quality supplier, we recognize that customers need more than just packaging. We differ from other packaging manufacturers in the services we provide, which augment our glass vials and other containers. A good example of this is the recent enhancement of our Type I molded glass portfolio, providing three market-driven product and service offerings. This has seen a great response from customers, enabling us to identify the challenges that they experience with expectations of product performance. With our three new AXpert, AXecure, and AXess categories, we are now able to match product, service, quality and delivery expectations far more accurately to customer needs. We are striving towards zero defects, and the ability to match product and customer needs help us to do this.

Our most recent innovation has been the extension to the Sterinity platform – with the introduction of 100 ml molded glass vials in Stevanato Group’s EZ-fill® Tray packaging system. We go to great lengths to listen to our customers and understand their needs, and it was clear that the pharma and biotech markets were in need of larger size pre-sterilized vials for aseptic fill/finish of parenteral drug products. This is the first time that a global pharmaceutical packaging manufacturer has offered this solution, so we are proud to fill that gap in the market.

We have many exciting projects in store for 2022, in particular focusing on our added value services that distinguish SGD Pharma as a provider of high-quality glass packaging. We expect to be able to expand our products into more markets, and to add new performance to our existing product ranges. There are several new launches planned for 2022 as a result, which we hope to announce at CPhI 2022 – we’ll be at booth 30D40 so make sure to come and see us if you’re there.

For more information about our products, contact us today to discuss your needs.

Did you know that glass is the only form of packaging with infinite recycling potential? Described by Nature as ‘The hidden gem in a carbon-neutral future’ [1], glass is made from natural and abundant raw materials, sand, soda ash and limestone, and can be 100% recycled without any loss of quality or product integrity throughout the process. This is unlike its plastic counterparts, which can take up to 500 years to decompose in landfills and can usually only be recycled one or two times.[2]

Glass is the most sustainable pharmaceutical packaging solution; which for modern consumers is just as important as the product it is protecting inside.[3] In Europe alone, three quarters of consumers say that they prefer to buy products with environmentally-friendly packaging.[4] These concerns have been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with nearly half of consumers since wanting to reduce their carbon footprint and 59% more concerned about the environmental impact of brands they use.[5] Sustainability has become top of the agenda and demand is increasing for businesses and governments to make more sustainable choices. As a glass manufacturer, this is where SGD Pharma comes in.

With the world becoming more sustainably aware and consumer habits shifting to better consider the environment and health in their purchases, glass is taking the spotlight as the ideal packaging choice. According to consumer research commissioned by the European Federation of glass packaging makers, FEVE, 91% of Europeans would recommend glass as the best packaging material [6] and three in four would opt for beauty fragrance and medical products in glass over any other packaging material.[7] The pharmaceutical industry must therefore keep up and adapt in order to respond to the ever-growing demand for sustainably packaged drug products.

Commitment to sustainability  

Manjt Singh, Chair of the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI) describes the goal of sustainable sourcing as “to improve the ethical, environmental and social performance of suppliers and ultimately mitigate any negative impacts found within the supply chain.”[8] As a leading pharmaceutical glass packaging supplier, SGD Pharma is committed to contributing to these improvements. Having always invested in sustainable actions, evidenced by our Platinum EcoVadis rating, SGD Pharma will continue to enhance its sites to promote the best health and safety practices for employees, and to limit its impact on the environment.

By nature, the manufacturing of glass requires large amounts of energy, which results in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, we strive to continuously improve the energy efficiency of our industrial process by investing in the most advanced technologies for our furnaces and continuously upgrade our installations throughout the industrial process. Over the past few years alone, SGD Pharma has invested in renovation projects at multiple production facilities to upgrade furnaces to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. We are already using the technology that exists to make glass production more environmentally friendly – and we will continue to develop new ways to further improve efficiency.

At SGD Pharma we have developed an internal energy management standard (based on ISO 50001) that continually improves the energy performance at all SGD Pharma manufacturing plants and develops a group culture of energy performance. As of 2021, five of our plants, Kipfenberg (Germany), Zhanjiang (China), Vemula (India), Sucy-en-Brie (France) and Saint-Quentin-Lamotte (France), are ISO 14001 certified (the international standard for environmental management systems). We have a clear ambition for waste management: reduce, reuse and recycle. For example, during the fabrication process at our plants, we use on average 26.94% of internal cullet^*. By using recycled glass in the process, we use less energy from the raw material decarbonization, which in turn further reduces GHG emissions.

Sucy: A case study

The latest SGD Pharma development project is at our 100+ year-old Sucy-en-Brie glass vial manufacturing facility outside of Paris, focusing on industrial improvements to increase worker safety and implement sustainable changes. This major transformation will enable SGD Pharma to better service its global customers and reduce its impact on the environment. The furnace reconstruction in 2021 has already reduced our energy consumption by 10% so far. As well as this, the investment has been focussed on optimizing water consumption and resource efficiency to reduce waste. The next step for the Sucy-en-Brie plant is the reconstruction of a third furnace and implementation of the best technologies that use electricity and natural gas power for better heat recovery to further reduce Sucy’s GHG emissions.

How can we make glass greener?

So far, the glass industry has halved the amount of energy used per tonne of glass over the last 40 years [9] and the United Nations (UN) plan to cut carbon emissions and reach net-zero by 2050.[10] At SGD Pharma we will continue to work towards our environmental, social and ethical goals in 2022 and invest in initiatives to further reduce our carbon emissions. Stay tuned for an update on our efforts.

We are pleased that the UN have dedicated 2022 as the international year of glass (#iyog22)– it is a great opportunity to recognize its sustainable potential. The pharmaceutical industry is already contributing towards sustainable sourcing through industry-led, collaborative initiatives that are working to build responsible supply chains such as ‘Close the Glass Loop’ and we are keen to get involved.[11] See the further reading below to find out more:

*Cullet: Recycled broken or waste glass