Sustainable Pharma: Innovating for a Greener Future
Hosted at CPI’s Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (MMIC), Glasgow
Date: 9th October 2025
Location: Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre, Glasgow
Time: 11:15 – 16:30
Join industry leaders, engineers and innovators for an afternoon focused on advancing sustainability in pharmaceutical manufacturing. This event will explore cutting-edge approaches to energy efficiency, data-driven decision-making, and carbon footprint reduction in pharmaceutical operations.
Key sessions include an in-depth look at implementing Smart HVAC systems in both new and existing facilities, a practical walkthrough of CPI’s stepwise approach to calculating CO₂ footprints, an introduction to sustainable lab of the future initiatives, and a presentation on the Data Institute — a ground-breaking platform for sharing best practices, setting industry standards, and advancing sustainability across the pharmaceutical sector.
Network with peers, explore the latest in sustainable technologies and attend a digital tour of CPI’s state-of-the-art facilities. Whether you're driving green initiatives or shaping future pharmaceutical strategies, this is your opportunity to connect and collaborate on a more sustainable future.
Event Agenda
11:15 – 11:30 | Registration
11:30 – 12:00 | Networking & MMIC Digital Tour
12:00 – 12:50 | Lunch & Networking
12:50 – 12:55 | Welcome – ISPE
12:55 – 13:10 | MMIC/CPI Introduction & Sustainability Focus
13:10 – 13:55 | Key Considerations for the Implementation of Smart HVAC – EECO2
13:55 – 14:35 | A Data Institute to support sustainability life cycle for products - CPI
14:35 – 14:50 | Break & Networking
14:50 – 15:25 | How to Calculate CO2 Footprint – A Stepwise Approach – CPI
15:25 – 16:00 | The Sustainable Lab of the Future: Smart, Efficient & Responsible – CPI
16:00 – 16:30 | Networking and MMIC Digital Tour
Ticket Prices
ISPE Member - £30 per person
ISPE Non Member - £50 per person
ISPE Emerging Leader Member - £18 per person
Emerging Leader Non Member - £20 per person
Presenters
Deborah McElhone, Head of Sustainability (Pharma), Centre for Process Innovation (CPI)
Deborah McElhone is the Head of Sustainability (Pharma) at the Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Centre, part of CPI, where she leads initiatives focused on sustainable pharmaceutical manufacturing. Since joining CPI in 2022, Deborah has played a key role in advancing innovation through her previous position as Grand Challenge Lead, driving progress in continuous manufacturing technologies.
With nearly 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, including roles at Q-One Biotech Ltd, Piramal Pharma, Bioreliance and Merck, Deborah brings a wealth of expertise spanning Quality Assurance, R&D, and Strategic Program Management. She has served as Head of Research and Development for a CRO/CMO specialising in Antibody Drug Conjugates and held senior commercial roles in business development and strategic partnerships.
Deborah’s extensive CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls) experience ranges from proof-of-concept to commercial drug product launch, leading multidisciplinary teams across the development lifecycle.
She holds a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a PhD in Glycobiology from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
Nick Bancroft, Product & Operations Director, EECO2
Nick Bancroft is the Product and Operations Director at EECO2. Join him as he dives into the practical and strategic aspects of implementing Smart HVAC systems across both retrofit and new pharmaceutical facilities.
What to Expect:
- Why early stakeholder engagement matters
- How to align internal decision makers around shared goals
- Engineering assessments: What to evaluate and why
- Smart tech selection from plug-and-play to complex integrations
- Ensuring compliance and performance
- Enable secure sharing of scope 1-3 carbon emissions from pharmaceuticals manufacture with customers, suppliers and the NHS
- Enforce robust security protocols within a zero-trust cloud-based data-sharing environment
- Establish and maintain standards for material properties and manufacturing data, including what to record, how to record it, and how to share it securely
- Support industry-wide carbon reduction through improved production models powered by federated learning
This session is about more than systems and sensors, it’s about changing mindsets. Nick will share not only technical insights but also the human and cultural barriers to progress, and how tackling those can unlock unexpected benefits.
Nick brings over a decade of experience in regulated industries, including engineering and leadership roles at JCB, Eaton, and Bentley Motors. Since 2021, he has led EECO2’s product division, guiding clients from assessment through to implementation. He’s passionate about bridging the gap between technical innovation and real-world adoption in the pharma sector.
Don't miss this opportunity to rethink how HVAC fits into a sustainable future for pharma.
Lukas Kuerten, Digital Innovation Manager (Biopharma Division), Centre for Process Innovation (CPI)
Lukas Kuerten leads digital transformation efforts at CPI. As Digital Innovation Manager, he is responsible for advancing CPI into a data-driven enterprise by delivering end-to-end data science solutions for industrial partners. Lukas’ work focuses on creating digital connectivity from lab and plant to cloud. He is particularly passionate about the use of AI and machine learning in low-volume, high-value industries like biopharmaceuticals, where datasets are small and data privacy is paramount.
An initial use case for Lukas’ current work addresses a key NHS requirement: by 2028, all suppliers must report the carbon footprint of their products using a standardised methodology. The platform he is helping to build will support organisations in meeting this mandate efficiently, while laying the groundwork for broader digital transformation across the pharmaceutical sector.
At the event, Lukas will present a forward-thinking initiative to build a Medicines Manufacturing Data Institute - leveraging CPI’s existing Digital Membership which has successfully developed digital architecture frameworks for pharmaceutical manufacture. The Data Institute will aim to:
Lukas will also share his expertise in How to Calculate CO2 Footprint – A Stepwise Approach. He will explore the different ways we can gather data to achieve the same sustainability goals. We will walk through how we are building up our CO2 footprint data incrementally, adding new sources over time to improve accuracy. This approach allows for contributions from different sources and individuals, helping to expand the dataset in a controlled and manageable way.”
Sean Ruane, Principal Data Scientist, Centre for Process Innovation (CPI)
Sean Ruane is a Principal Data Scientist at the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), bringing a wealth of experience at the intersection of science, engineering, and data.
Starting his career as a downstream scientist in the pharmaceutical sector, Sean developed expertise in digital integration, process intensification, process control, modelling, and experimental system design tailored for data science applications. Over the years, he has become an accomplished technical leader, driving projects that range from innovative development systems and large-scale data science initiatives to the design and implementation of CPI’s end-to-end continuous processing lab.
Currently, Sean is spearheading CPI’s Lab of the Future programme, a collaborative initiative working across organisations to create a standardised, vendor-agnostic framework for lab digitalisation. This initiative aims to make data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), build simpler pathways to automation and enable faster, better decision-making in the lab and across the business.
Sean will be sharing his expertise through his presentation, The Sustainable Lab of the Future: Smart, Efficient & Responsible, at the event on 9th October. This presentation will explore how decisions that drive a large proportion of pharma’s environmental impacts often originate in the lab, from small choices about how experiments are run to major decisions on process design. Yet these choices are often made without fully understanding their environmental consequences.
Sean will showcase how the Sustainable Lab of the Future aims to change this by:
- Enabling informed, environmentally conscious decision-making
- Integrating sustainability modelling and tracking into real-time lab workflows
- Building a comprehensive digital framework to accelerate adoption of sustainable practices