Rethinking Packaging and Reverse Logistics: Collaborative Approaches for Pharma Sustainability

Sustainable Packaging in Life Science & MedTech Air Cargo

Frank Van Gelder, Secretary General of Pharma.Aero, and his guests dive into a critical challenge: reducing the environmental impact of tertiary packaging in air cargo. How can the industry move towards more sustainable, reusable, and recyclable packaging solutions without compromising safety and efficiency?

Joining the discussion are:
 ✔ Claire Jung, Global Transportation Quality Manager at Zoetis
 ✔ Olav Glorvigen, Director of Global Product management at Cargolux
✔ Christopher Storch, Head of Sales TempChain International at Envirotainer

💡 Key Takeaways:
📦 "Sustainability is far more than just reducing waste—it’s about rethinking the entire supply chain." – Christopher Storch
🔄 "Reusing packaging requires strict internal qualifications to ensure safety and performance." – Claire Jung
🌍 "Sustainability isn't just an environmental win—it can also be an economic advantage." – Olav Glorvigen

Transcript

Insight, a Pharma.Aero Podcast. 

Frank Van Gelder, Secretary General Pharma.Aero: Welcome to the Pharma.Aero podcast series where we have a closer look at sustainability. I'm Frank van Gelder and today we're zooming into the tertiary packaging in life science and MedTech air cargo. We at Pharma.Aero are working on a critical project that tackles a big question: how can we reduce the environmental impact on the packaging used to transport life-saving medicines around the world? Let's talk about that. With me today in the studio we have three of the companies engaged in this project as Pharma.Aero members: Envirotainer, a packaging company, Zoetis, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, and Cargolux, a cargo airline. In other words, welcome to Claire Jung, Global Transportation Quality Manager at Zoetis, Olav Glorvigen, Director of Global Product Management at Cargolux and Christopher Storch, Head of Sales TempChain International at Envirotel. Looking at tertiary packaging in the air cargo industry, are there ways to recycle and reuse overall these types of packaging to overall reduce CO2 emissions and to avoid landfill waste?

FVG: Olav, as airline we can think theoretically but an airline needs to think safety in the first place. What are your thoughts? 

Olav Glorvigen, Cargolux: We're very happy to be part of this discussion as such. And there are, as you mentioned, existing practices. I think these are already in place to a certain extent. And we are happy to expand on those. There are customers, whether they are freight forwarders or shippers, where we are helping to get the material reused, either by returning it or by other means. And also, there are also, I would say, potential other methods that we could look at, such as returns, closed-loop solutions, and so on, that would be an output of such discussions. Furthermore, I'd say that there is not only an environmental benefit here, it could also be a huge economic win, which is good for everyone, of course, and there might be other solutions that we haven't looked at yet or at least in a sort of a aggregated way to look at biodegradable materials for example where we see that elsewhere in the pharma industry where we could also use that potentially for thermal covering solutions. 

FVG: Claire, do you work on these elements with your customers at one side and with your vendors? 

Claire Jung, Zoetis: Yeah for sure so thank you for having me today. But indeed I believe you know from the aspect of reusing solutions we currently do at Zoetis. In order to do so, though, there has to be an internal qualification process to ensure the acceptability of the return solution is satisfactory for reuse. So meaning when the solutions are returned by the, you know, transporter with the help of the freight forwarder, we have to have internal quality checks to ensure that dense cosmetic defects, scratches, so on and so forth, that are visible don't necessarily have any impact on the internal components of the shipper. so there must be acceptance criteria that is met and as markets change and evolve we're constantly evaluating options for reusable and recyclable materials.

FVG: Thank you. And Christopher, of course, all eyes are on you, you're a packaging provider. As a packaging provider, how can you assist? 

Christopher Storch, Envirotainer: Frank, first of all, thank you very much for having me, and indeed it's an industry target and also a big aim for us as a packaging solution provider to minimize CO2 emissions and the environmental impact of thermal packaging solutions and to prove that or to estimate the impact we typically use the life cycle assessment to calculate the CO2 emissions. We also apply the R's like reuse and recycle to increase sustainability adding to what Olaf has already stated, sustainability is far more than just reducing the environmental impact, it's also a commercial or economic sustainability we can and shall look into. And I'd like to point out and differentiate between multi-use packaging solutions and single-use packaging solutions. So for multi-use packaging solutions being in place for years and decades, both parcel size and pallet size, we see them typically managed in regional or global networks where the target is to maximize the number of reuse and in order to enable this it requires reverse logistics on the one side but it also requires possibility for repair or replacement of single components. Talking about single-use big discussion in the industry whether needed or not moving forward I believe we'll see still a long time need for single-use packaging solutions to deliver valuable products to non-return destinations as I tend to call them, but looking into single-use packaging I believe we need to really focus on eco-friendly materials, look for a second life possibly and ideally at the point of destination, and also wherever reuse is not possible to look into curbside recyclability and that does not only go for single -use packaging solutions but also for multi-use, the right material choice. One point surely being also that you could look for near-shore sourcing to keep transport distances and CO2 emissions low for getting your materials into the manufacturing site and global availability of material also supports in case you have a global footprint of manufacturing. Finally I'd like to point out that looking into materials, we drive sustainability by applying long -lasting materials which assures robustness and a long lifetime of a packaging solution. 

FVG: Thank you. Going further in the R's, reuse, let's look at repurpose. Quality is and shall be always number one, of course, and therefore the protection of the content of the shipments are crucial. Would it be possible to jointly rethink strategies to avoid empty container transports on certain legs of life science airport corridors. In other words, is there a true repurpose strategy possible? And with this, I look first to you again, Christopher, you used already the two R's, this is the third one, what do you think? 

Christopher Storch, Envirotainer: I believe it's the nature of our industry and for us as an air freight container operator to apply network optimization and data-driven network planning, partly including AI, to optimize our global flows and to reduce the movements of empty containers. What surely helps is a dense network of logistic stations to help us reduce distances and CO2 emissions to move empty containers on a positioning or repositioning in case we cannot fully avoid network balancing. The scale of economy is also driving the business so the broader customer base is the number of pharma shippers being served and with the global fleet of containers, the more it helps to balance out and connect trade lanes and shipments to avoid empty flows. So connecting A, B, C, A instead of moving A, B and return empty to A. And what is also supporting the idea of driving sustainability is the modularity of any equipment, any temperature control packaging solution. So using one piece of packaging, whether parcel or pallet size for multiple temperature ranges, for different transport legs, so that it can go one way in one temperature range, maybe deep frozen and return flow is in controlled room temperature. 

FVG: Okay. Claire, of course, is there a possibility to even plan a strategic rebooking policy for other purposes for the packaging that you're afraid forwarders are using in booking? 

Claire Jung, Zoetis: From a quality perspective, which I appreciate that being emphasized, number one, being in quality, but I do believe there's opportunity here. However, with all aspects, it's crucial to know that the quality checks would be in place. So, for example, let's say we transport something in a container and instead of shipping it back empty, it's then filled with something else and returned. Upon that return, you know, there's quality checks done, disinfectants, cleaning, all of those things that would need to undergo inspection to ensure there's no potential or any residuals that could result in a cross-contamination issue. So having a robust process to ensure the product quality isn't compromised is certainly key. 

FVG: And so Olav, how can airlines steer and take lead in assisting this or to bring different commodities and bookings together as airline consolidators? 

Olav Glorvigen, Cargolux: Well that's a big one. I'm not sure that, you know, I think the important thing here again is that we are part of the conversation and that you know in for us like this like Pharma Aero, for example, joining the academic discussion as well to see how we can solve these things but when it comes to for example avoiding contamination across you know if you do cross -use and so on this is very much down to the management of the containers whoever does that whether it's the shipper or the container company or like in our case we also have own containers. But there are already things like that happening. I mean, we are using the containers when they go back empty for cargo that is not smelly, to put it that way, you know, and that is definitely possible. But if you're going to use them for, say, other kind of cargo that also needs cooling, such as vegetables or fruit or what have you, then there certainly needs to be strict quality assurance in place in between these kind of uses so there's no sort of cross-contamination or similar. Again I'd point to the potential financial incentives of doing this of course no one in the industry wants empty containers to fly around and that's important to know. 

Christopher Storch, Envirotainer: I'd like to add a point Olav just made and that's not to interfere with any of your business as an airline but there are certainly cases where we can simply not avoid moving empty containers and in order to keep CO2 emissions low then there is an option to reposition by sea freight. Surely takes more time, needs more equipment in the loop to keep up availability but that's an option to reduce CO2 in case we cannot fully avoid the empty flows. Generally I'd like to add to what Claire and Olav were mentioning. It needs collaboration overall amongst all the players along the pharma coal chain, the pharma shippers, the airlines forwarders, the packaging solution providers, to tackle that surely challenging task of ideally reducing empty flows and, if not impossible otherwise, to reduce the CO2 emissions and the environmental impact, also to make it economically sustainable. 

Claire Jung, Zoetis: Obviously, it's not always feasible to have the cargo container returned with something in it, and it may not even be advantageous to the business because especially dealing within a pharmaceutical industry, there are certain things that cannot, you know, we have to have specified containers for transport anyway, so it can be a challenge. But so I certainly agree with what he pointed out. 

FVG: So continuing on this discussion, actually, it comes all down to reverse logistics, the big elephant in the room. So Claire, is there a role to fully orchestrate the supply chain and logistics better to optimize reverse logistics? 

Claire Jung, Zoetis: So for our larger markets, we do specifically have reverse logistics in place for the utilization of the return of our reusable passive solutions. So the solutions are consolidated, we internally organize, so internally like within Zoetis, organize the return with the freight forwarders, and then it goes on from there. It's cost effective, but because they are returned via ocean, to your point, then we are reducing the CO2 emissions. So, it's a combined effort with the freight forwarders, so I wouldn't say they can fully orchestrate it, but between Zoetis and the freight forwarders, we are able to get the solutions back, and not only cost -effective, but also with the reduction of CO2 emissions with the use of ocean carriers. 

FVG: Christopher, back to you. How can you assist? 

Christopher Storch, Envirotainer: Reverse logistics is specifically a challenge for the smaller parcel -sized business, even more when it comes to certain territories in the world like Latin America or parts of Southeast Asia where we're looking at still rather underdeveloped cold chain infrastructure like lack of temperature controlled warehouses, also a certain weakness in transport network or network planning and tracking capabilities. So it comes down to tracing and securing the return of empty boxes. But looking into other territories like Europe or the U.S., we have well-established solutions in place, specifically for clinical trial business, but also for commercial shipments. That is Europe, that is North America, that is also some countries in APEC like Singapore where Va-Q-Tech, now Envirotainer, delivers 250,000 plus shipments per year for this kind of clinical trial and also commercial business using multi-use packaging solutions. Looking into reverse logistics as the big elephant in the room you say and in order to slice it down and to make it digestible it needs collaboration amongst all the stakeholders in the cold chain ecosystem. It's the pharma shipper respectively the CDMOs or CROs, it's the forwarders, the integrators or specialty couriers and it is then the packaging solution providers. The advantage of reverse logistics for small parcel packaging solutions is that it typically allows using high-performance packaging solutions at a significantly reduced price compared to adequate single-use packaging solutions, despite the fact of having to return the empty packaging to the place of origin for refurbishment and reuse. And that comes with transportation costs and network balancing efforts, which also has a price tag. But I believe that CO2 and total landed cost calculations that we typically run for our customers do prove the viability of multi-use boxes being used in reverse logistics systems for clinical trial and commercial product distribution, especially in Europe and Northern America with more sophisticated and well-developed infrastructure. And on top of that, last thought to that, that typically such solutions provide an asset-free solution to the pharma shippers because it's its packaging solution provider and or a logistics service provider keeping the fleet of boxes and managing it on behalf of the pharma shippers. 

FVG: And Olav, definitely a no -brainer for me. Reverse logistics, flying empty back with expensive and high emission, reverse logistic costs. What are your thoughts as an airline industry on this or representing an airline and an airline industry? 

Olav Glorvingen, Cargolux: Well, the cost part is definitely the elephant in the room here, right? And there's a lot to just comment on what has already been said. I'd just like to take a sidestep and think of from my old industry, I came out of the passenger airline industry originally. And when you start flying to a new place, a new airport, you typically go to your handling agent and you say, for my customers, I need the following. and you give them what you need and they provide it and then you get the price. In this industry, we seem to go to the airport and say, okay, so what do you have? And if then, you know, warehouses with temperature control is not part of it, that's just the way it is, because the investments are so enormous that you can't invest in these kind of things in certain parts of the world for relatively small amounts of cargo. And I think it's just a very interesting parallel to draw as such. Collaboration, that's the buzzword. And that works until you ask who's going to pay. And that's really what it comes down to. And again, back to the elephant, right? Also the legislation, the influence of the European Commission, for example, says that in 2030, I think it is, all pharma -related packaging should be recyclable. That could, at least theoretically, even result in less reverse logistics in some cases, I suppose. So there's a lot there to still be looked into. We say we want to be sustainable as an industry, as a cold chain, as a whole, the whole ecosystem. But the question is, who's going to pay for it? I think one way or another, we are here not just to serve our customers' needs and the pharma shippers' requirements, but to be an integral part of the development in order to serve the industry as a whole and then ultimately the patient. 

Christopher Storch, Envirotainer: I'd like to add to what Olav just said, it's all down to the cost and who takes those and what price tag comes with a packaging or overall logistics solution to move a valuable product end to end. I believe it is a case -by -case decision. It's not per se that multi -use is more economically friendly than single use or that reverse logistics is a solution to overcome all our sustainability challenges. It really depends on a set of parameters, what is to be shipped from where to where, which volume, cadence, temperature, and other security elements. and then CO2, emission calculation, total landed cost approach will guide us choosing the most appropriate and I'd say most sustainable solution referring to both statements of Claire and Olav earlier to make this most sustainable both from the environmental impact as well as from the commercial perspective. 

FVG: What a journey we have taken today. Today we have tackled the complex challenge of reducing the environmental impact of tertiary packaging in pharmaceutical air cargo. Recycling, reusing and cutting CO2 emissions are all within reach if we just rethink our strategy. Eliminating empty container transport and balancing the cost of reuse versus new production are key hurdles we need to address. And let's not forget the elephant in the room, reverse logistics. How do we make that work efficiently? Collaboration, the buzzword or not, seems a bit to be crucified on top of the cost. But collaboration across the supply chain is crucial to unlocking these solutions. Stay tuned to learn the findings of our sustainability project that we are working on at Pharma.Aero.  I would like to thank my guests of today, and to you tuning in, thank you for listening. Stay tuned for more to come on our podcast channel. I'm Frank van Gelder, Secretary General of Pharma.Aero. Till next time and all the best to you. 

Insights, a podcast by Pharma.Aero.