CPHI North America 2023: from the experts – Sharp Services

Throughout CPHI North America (Philadelphia, PA; April 25–27, 2023), we caught up with some of the exhibiting organisations to ask what the show brings to the North American pharmaceutical sector, and what is driving industry innovation in this region of the world. 

1. Can you give a brief overview of your company and your role? 

Malick: I’m an Account Executive, dealing with new leads and working with established customers to bring in new opportunities. At a high-level overview, Sharp supports the packaging of a client’s drug product at the commercial and clinical side. Allentown, Macungie, and Conshohocken do all the primary and secondary packaging, while Bethlehem, which is our clinical site, also has some analytical support services, clinical trials, and also commercial packaging capabilities. 

2. What does it mean for your team/company to be here this year at CPHI North America? 

Malick: I’d say we’re here again because we still recognise that the pharma industry involves a lot of close contacts and those established relationships go a very long way. For a big industry, it’s a pretty small space. You often rub shoulders with people that work at Pfizer or Novartis – they'll often go to a small start-up so it’s very heavily relationship based. 

3. What is the importance of regional events such as CPHI North America for the pharmaceutical supply chain and services industry in the Americas? 

Malick: I’d say for Sharp, at least in the US, you realise we’re local in terms of Philadelphia. We have values – we’re a logistics hub up to New York, down to Baltimore, and west out to Pittsburgh and the rest of the States. Being here in Philly and making people aware of all our US states, whether it’s clinical or commercial, are within an hour’s drive, puts some perspective to it and depending on where they are located makes them realise they are not too far away from a solution. 

4. Are there any specific challenges for pharmaceutical services and how do they affect the wider pharmaceutical industry? How do trade shows such as CPHI North America help the supply chain address these issues? 

Malick: As everyone saw with COVID-19, it was the lead time for everything. Resource constraints at the personal level were a huge challenge. At events like CPHI, you run into people with skills and specialties that you realise can help and while we have that internally, who’s to say that down the road we might not look for additional support no matter where we are? Where lead times used to be 2–3 months, they are now 6–8 months. 

Berg: With COVID and everybody working from home than previously, a digital presence is definitely important. That being said, a combination of digital and face-to-face events to meet people and network is also really important. I don’t think you can do one without the other. I think just some of the standard challenges have always been speed-to-market. The way Sharp addresses this, because we focus specifically on primary and secondary packaging (we’re experts in it), is being able to support biotech clients who are often small and don’t have any of those capabilities. Even large pharma, when they need something to move faster than they can achieve within their own walls, they turn to partners like Sharp to do that. 

5. From speaker talks, panel discussions, breakfast sessions, and more, CPHI North America has a lot to offer the pharma industry this year. What are you looking forward to this year at CPHI North America? 

Malick: 1) Meeting new contacts and 2) there’s more people here to interact with Sharp than before. People are here [at CPHI] for a multitude or reasons. You get a lot more face-time with people than before. Before, you would go into someone’s office or site to have a meeting. With COVID, the normalisation of being in front of our computers and having a meeting does cause us to miss out on that personal interaction time. People have more reason to drive or fly into Philadelphia for the day or a couple days.