If You Missed CPhI Worldwide — You Missed A Lot
By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL
To fly to this year’s CPhI Worldwide (CPhIww) conference, held October 22-24 at the Messe in Frankfurt, Germany, is about an 8 hour flight from New York. For the Life Science Leader team, by the time we hit the ground and headed straight to the show, we had been traveling for nearly 20 hours. But this is an important show, boasting over 34,000 attendees from 140 countries and 2,200 exhibitors. Don’t forget that the EU remains the second largest pharmaceutical market behind the United States. But that isn’t the reason why CPhIww continues to be one of the last shows people would consider cancelling from their calendar in the event of a budget crisis. CPhIww is an ideal central meeting hub for the East and West to conduct international pharmaceutical business. Though a flight from Beijing to Frankfurt is around 10 hours, it is still 4 hours less than going to NYC. As a result, company decision makers from all over the globe are more willing to attend this event. This is also why, if you attend CPhIww next year in Paris (Nord Villepinte, October 7 – 9), remember the first rule of trade shows — wear comfortable shoes. It’s a massive venue, and you will be walking a lot to get from meeting to meeting. It’s worth it, though. In fact, perhaps a few of the big shows in the United States could learn a thing or two from the organizers of CPhIww.
Colocation, Colocation, Colocation
If you go to the CPhI worldwide website, you will see logos for P-mec, InnoPack, and iCSE. These events are colocated and take place at the same time, so you are really attending four events. CPhI brings together pharmaceutical ingredient professionals, while iCSE focuses on outsourcing solution providers. InnoPack attracts buyers and sellers from the packaging and pharmaceutical industries, and P-mec pharmaceutical machinery, equipment, and technology decision makers.
At the show, when I spoke with Terry Novak, president of Norwich Pharma Services, one of the biggest challenges his company faces as a CMO is forecasting commercial capacity, which he described as a balancing act of handing over/underutilization. There are a number of strategies he employs to manage this challenge, but one you might not think of is leveraging strategic partnerships. For example, Novak sited the trusted relationship he has built with Federal Equipment Company, a 50-year-old company which supplies pre-owned and used pharmaceutical, chemical, plastics, and packaging machinery. When Norwich is working on bidding a project, Novak is sure to engage the expertise of Federal — especially if agreeing to the deal requires Norwich to procure a new piece of manufacturing equipment. These trusting cross-industry relationships aren’t built over the phone, but at events and meetings that bring together executives at the highest levels.
Of course I realize that UBM owns all four of these shows. This certainly makes it much easier to colocate and cross promote these events. And though events like DCAT and BIO draw a number of colocated events, both could do a better job of embracing, promoting, and partnering with these shows,
Congratulating CMOs
One of the benefits of attending CPhI for me was the opportunity to meet and congratulate executives on being 2013 CMO Leadership Award winners. In addition to Norwich, I had the chance to meet with CMO Award winners from companies such as AbbVie, Aesica, Alkermes, AMRI, Ash Stevens, Baxter, Catalent, Cook Pharmica, JHP, Next Pharma, DSM, GSK, Pfizer CentreSource, and Solvias. The folks at Patheon, who conducted over 170 meetings at CPhI, even took the time for a quick photo to celebrate being a four-category award winner.
Overall, CPhIww proved to be a wealth of knowledge and networking opportunities — much like it always has been. I look forward to it next year, despite the long travel times.