This week, the PSCI held its first ever virtual Spring Meeting, reaching more members than ever! Over 140 individuals from our 44 member companies and partners connected from 22 countries around the world to join us for a day of compelling plenaries from experts, updates about our recent achievements and upcoming projects, and interactive discussions on pressing issues.

We heard about challenges and opportunities for the PSCI from our Chair Caroline O’Brien, hosted a rich session on climate change and tackling scope 3 emissions with contributions from AstraZeneca, Carnstone, and a lively panel discussion with colleagues from the Pharmaceutical Environment Group (PEG). Novartis delivered a thought-provoking talk on Blockchain, and PSCI Vice-Chair Manjit Singh introduced the upcoming PSCI Strategy Review, not to mention the regular updates from our fantastic committee chairs.

Finally, we were honoured to welcome Professor Sir David King, founder of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University and former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government, who shared his experience advising on the foot-and-mouth epidemic and climate-related issues in a fascinating opening talk.

All sessions were recorded and are available to members for replay on the event’s platform.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this first virtual meeting and we hope to see you all again very soon – online or in person!

The PSCI Secretariat

What impact will #Covid19 have on pharmaceutical supply chains? Last week, we spoke to the team at @cphionline @Informa about the role that responsible practices in supply chains have in driving resilience.

"The criticality of responsible supply chain management has moved into sharp focus in recent years, and never more so than during the current global COVID-19 emergency,” said a representative from the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI), whose 40+ member companies from across the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries work collaboratively to advance responsible supply chain practices. “Investing in supply chain responsibility ensures a more resilient, dependable supply chain in challenging times, focusing on what we know works best: safe and sanitary working environments, responsible environmental stewardship, fair labor practices and ongoing, open dialogue with suppliers.”

You can read the full article here.

Members are encouraged to Like and Share the news via our social channels on Twitter and LinkedIn.

We are pleased to launch the lightly refreshed PSCI Principles. The Principles underpin the work of PSCI, and form the basis of our mission. As such, we encourage all members, suppliers, and auditors to ensure they understand and are familiar with them.

The Principles have been in place, in their original form, since they were agreed by PSCI’s founding members in 2006. This is the first time they have been updated, and the refresh was motivated partly in recognition of the need for periodic review. Additionally, inputs from stakeholders during the 2018-2020 Strategy Review, and from the Advisory Panel, indicated the need to update or add wording on certain issues and topics.

The refresh followed a consultative process, with member feedback invited, and culminating in a formal vote including all members, which took place at the AGM in Fall 2019.

The refreshed Principles take effect for members from 1st January 2020. To ensure the Principles are reflected in member practices, the first accountability questions will be in the annual member accountability survey, due in September 2020; any non-compliance to the refreshed Principles will be raised during member calls taking place in February 2021.

The more significant changes to the Principles are highlighted below:

• Strengthened references to human rights, and emphasized PSCI’s commitment in this area

• Adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) as the internationally agreed standard for the corporate responsibility to respect human rights

• Strengthened content on anti-bribery and corruption, data protection, freely chosen employment, and health & safety

• New clauses on patient safety, conflicts of interest, resource management and sustainable sourcing.

As ever, the Principles are made available freely and publicly to anyone with an interest in responsible supply chains for our sector. To view the Principles, visit them in our Resources library.

Translated versions of the Principles in key languages will be made available in Spring 2020.

Any comments to the refreshed Principles, or their implementation, should be submitted to the Secretariat.

Recently we published an article about PSCI and sustainable packaging on Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and Packing Sourcer (PMPS) August 2019. PMPS is a specialist journal designed to provide worldwide coverage of a range of topics relating to the pharmaceutical manufacturing and packaging sector, with around 10K readers mainly in Europe and North America.

In this article we shared PSCI’s approach on promoting responsible practices via PSCI principles and audits sharing project, insights from the audits and case study from PSCI member company. See below audit findings on different topics among packaging suppliers; around half of all audit findings are related to health and safety, especially worker protection, occupational health, and process safety.

Thanks to member company West, who provided their insights to promoting responsible practices in packaging.

Read the article here, page 68-69.

Enric Bosch from Boehringer Ingelheim, one of our PSCI members, and co-Chair of the PSCI Communications Committee, recently spoke at an industry event about sustainability in Pharma supply chains, Salon Internacional de Logistica in Barcelona.
The SIL Barcelona conference focused on Logistics, Transport, Intralogistics and Supply Chain in Southern Europe. Enric shared PSCI collaboration as an example of good practice where different companies in the same sector work together to build up a more sustainable supply chain.

Last week we hosted another great webinar on the antimicrobial resistance, hosted by Daniel Caldwell (Global Director, Environmental and Occupational Toxicology at Johnson & Johnson) and Neil Parke (Global HSE Consultant at Lilly).

We were thrilled to see so many members and suppliers tuning in, but in case you missed it, you can watch the webinar here.

The slide deck can also be downloaded here.

Last week we hosted a webinar on Emergency Preparedness and Response, with guest speaker Aaron Duff, Director of EHS&S at Johnson & Johnson. Aaron delivered a fantastic talk, and we were thrilled to see over 90 members and suppliers tuning in!

If you missed the webinar, you can watch it here.

Don't forget to tune in on the 18th July for our next webinar on Antimicrobial Resistance.

Yesterday, on 27th June 2019, Aaron Duff (Director of EHS&S at Johnson & Johnson) delivered a fantastic webinar on Emergency Preparedness and Response. We had fantastic attendance, with just under 90 people tuning in. It's great to see the PSCI webinars reaching out to wider audiences, and we look forward to seeing our viewer base continue to grow.

If you could not join us yesterday, the recording can be viewed here. The slides Aaron used are also available for download from the PSCI website.

Aaron was also kind enough to share some template documents with the webinar attendees. Both his Crisis Management Plan and Emergency Plan templates can be downloaded from the PSCI website.

Please remember to tune in on 18th July at 08.30 EST for our next webinar on Antimicrobial Resistance.

On Thursday 27th June, we will be hosting a webinar on emergency preparedness and response. We are delighted to be joined by Aaron Duff, Director of EHS&S at Johnson & Johnson.

The webinar will give an overview of the questions relating to emergency preparedness & response in the PSCI audit questionnaire and explain the PSCI's expectations.

For more information and to register, click here.