December 2023 • PharmaTimes Magazine • 18-19

// SUSTAINABILITY//


Outline of the future

Making sustainability an agenda-setting priority in 2024 and beyond

Outlining and achieving sustainability goals are not only critical for our planet, but also saving critical continuity. What goals will your company set this new year?

Sustainability goals are an important part of a company’s strategy and by meeting those goals, not only does a company improve its environmental impact, it can also increase its profitability.

At Cytiva, 95% of our emissions are scope 3, which means they occur outside of our immediate operations. There are ways we can reduce our global carbon footprint while also ensuring our products are delivered safely.

Whether it is through our purchasing choices or the way we conduct business, we are always looking for ways to make our business more sustainable.

After taking a closer look at our business, we discovered that we could make our logistics and packaging significantly more sustainable.

Making logistics more sustainable

Building sustainable logistics and packaging solutions are critical to making fundamental changes to improving a company’s impact on sustainability goals.

We improved our smart logistics by conducting a three-way change. The three elements to our smart logistics centre on rethinking packaging (volume and materials), shifting transportation modes and consolidating or shortening routes.
These CO2 cost savings have come from rethinking transport of materials and products all along our value chain, suppliers to customers.

Even as volumes increase, our logistics teams have shown we can reduce both CO2 and costs proving that what is good for the planet is also good for our business.

Packaging rethink

The first element of reducing volumes required us to optimise packaging size to ship smaller and lighter, while not compromising on safely delivering packages.

We remeasured and reweighed over 12,000 products to optimise packaging and reduce void fill.

As a result, we reduced pallet volumes by 60% for long-distance cargo for our Lab Filtration product line, generating 462 tons savings in transportation CO2 and total volume shipped in 2022.

Next, we looked at secondary packaging materials. In 2021, we introduced a ‘plastic hunt’ to reduce consumables such as void fill cushioning, bubble wrap, shrink wrap, tape and labels used in operations, and replace them with more sustainable materials.

In our Swedish warehouse, the plastic hunt will generate an 82% reduction in plastics, saving more than 7,000 kg of it annually.

The hunt was replicated in our warehouse in Singapore, and it will save more than 27% plastic or 1,636 kg. We aim to make this standard practice across distribution centres and manufacturing sites.


‘In our Swedish warehouse, the plastic hunt will generate an 82% reduction in plastics, saving more than 7000kg of it annually’


Each year at Cytiva we ship approximately 60,000 polystyrene boxes for temperature-controlled transport.

Polystyrene, however, is difficult to recycle and typically ends up in landfills. With that in mind, we decided to go further than offer our customers recycling options, we decided to eliminate it.

We duly rolled out a newer cold storage solution, which is made with primarily renewable paper and corn starch. The liners have been proven to maintain the necessary low temperatures in shipping boxes.

Polystyrene will be fully eliminated from Cytiva packaging by 2025, globally, eliminating 2,335 cubic metres of waste (the equivalent of 71 ocean shipping containers).

Optimising routes and modes

The next element assesses our need to ship sustainably and still meet customer demand in a timely manner.

This involves both inbound shipping of raw materials from suppliers and outbound shipping to customers. Can we shift shipping routes and designated transportation modes and still deliver on time?

We can shift from air transport (currently at 95% of our emissions) and use more ocean transport, which has significantly less carbon emission than air.

It does, however, require collaboration with customers and suppliers because ocean freight is slower.


‘After taking a closer look at our business, we discovered that we could make our logistics and packaging significantly more sustainable’


Establishing regional manufacturing

The final element involves shortening routes by manufacturing regionally for local distribution when it is possible. With improved logistics and regional manufacturing, we have saved $2.2M and 600 tCO2.

With a shift to regional manufacturing, we’re looking at our supply chain through a different lens. Cytiva serves its global customers from large centres in Switzerland, Sweden, China and the US. Air freight currently represents 95% of Cytiva’s transport emissions.

With regional manufacturing, we will significantly reduce our dependency on air transport. We will also able to be more agile in serving our global customers; better able to collaborate with them, and we can better secure supply in times of reducing disruption.

These three focus areas have saved 1,300 tCO2 and $3.4M in logistic costs in 2021.

In conclusion

We have outlined our three-pronged approach to setting manageable, yet ambitious logistics targets.

The efforts have brought us closer to meeting our sustainability mantra of People, Planet, Foundation.

By streamlining our focus on improving our logistics across our operations, the result has been a more sustainable planet-conscious organisation, reducing of harmful waste and greater profits.

But we cannot do this alone – moving to more sustainable logistics requires partnerships; partnerships with our customers and suppliers.

Bottom line – sustainability is good for business. What targets will you set this year?


Ryan Walker is Sustainability Program Leader at Cytiva.
Go to cytivalifesciences.com