CPHI North America: Industry Trends, Agenda Additions, and What to Expect at CPHI Milan

At CPHI North America, Pharmaceutical Technology® sat down with Tara Dougal, content director, Pharma, Informa Markets, to discuss successes and insights from CPHI North America 2024 and the agenda for the upcoming CPHI Milan.

“So, there's a lot to be excited about this year,” Dougal said, in reference to CPHI North America. “One thing that I'm really excited about is that we've moved a lot of our content to the show floor. Attendees will notice we have two theatres on the show floor this year, more content than has ever been at the show before. And the theatre being situated on show floor really creates a great buzz. So really excited to see that development.”

“The other thing I'm really excited about is a new feature for us, which is our startup market. So, we have launched it at some of our other events. It's brand new for North America. This year, we brought 16 young innovative companies to the show to showcase their products and their solutions. It's been such a busy zone all day; I've seen people filing through, chatting to all our startups, and it shows a real interest from the industry on where innovation is coming from.”

“I think when we're talking about the US pharma market, we talk a lot about supply chain resilience, [and] I think a lot of that is still a bit of a COVID hangover,” Dougal said, when asked about industry trends present at CPHI NA. “We're looking at how we can build resilience in supply chains, how we can re-shore or near shore manufacturing. And that still seems to be a pretty prevalent trend for this year.”

On changes to the CPHI NA conference agenda, Dougal said, “So actually, this year, we have a brand-new conference track on sustainability. And this is something which obviously is a huge buzzword in pharma. We cover it at a lot of our conferences and our events, but it's such an important issue. And what we see is that people are really hungry for knowledge around sustainability. They want to know what targets they should be setting, how they can achieve those targets, and how they can make actionable change. So, it's really great to see a whole track dedicated to sustainability this year.”