CPHI Milan will bring together leaders from across the pharma supply chain for the inaugural CPHI Sustainability Summit, taking place at this year's show at Fiera Milano on October 6-7, 2026.
The Summit, starting today, is sponsored by SK Pharmteco, Alperia, AstraZeneca, Sharp, ERM, Pharma LCA Consortium, AllocNow and gesco.
More than 300 companies and organisations from across the industry will share practical approaches and attempt to accelerate progress on sustainability targets.
The sponsors will bring expertise from manufacturing, packaging, supply chain, technology, procurement and sustainability, reflecting a central premise behind the Summit: many of the industry’s biggest sustainability challenges cannot be addressed by individual companies in isolation.
Progress increasingly requires collaboration between manufacturers, suppliers, customers, industry bodies and solution providers across the value chain.
The Summit will build on the CPHI Sustainability Collective, which connects sustainability leaders, manufacturers, suppliers, associations and solution providers.
Participants had identified common barriers and stressed the need for a forum focused on implementation and measurable outcomes.
A significant part of the programme will examine the practical tensions companies encounter when attempting to deliver sustainability at scale, including the following sessions:
- The Sustainability Power Hour, featuring organisations such as BioPhorum, Alliance To Zero, SHC, PSCI, plus other speakers, will bring industry leaders together for a fast-paced overview of the most impactful industry collaborations driving sustainability today
- In The Advocate & The Enabler: A Fireside Reality Check on Sustainability session, the realities of turning corporate sustainability objectives into operational change will be examined
- The interactive "Hackathons Hack the Friction: Buyer Solutions Lab" and "Supplier Sprint: From Challenge to Offer" will focus on suppliers using a problem-solving approach to overcome barriers in sustainable procurement. Participants will collaborate to find practical solutions to challenges that impede the incorporation of sustainability goals into purchasing decisions.
The programme will also tackle one of the industry’s most challenging commercial questions: who pays for more sustainable solutions? In the workshop entitled Green Extra Cost: How Can We Absorb Them Along the Value Chain?, speakers from Alliance to Zero will examine how pharma supply chains can manage and share additional sustainability costs.
Silvia Forroova, Director of Partnerships & Sustainability at CPHI and founder of the CPHI Sustainability Collective, said: “The industry has reached a point where sustainability conversations need to translate into decisions and action."
The challenges involved are interconnected, from procurement and manufacturing through to packaging and the wider supply chain and no single organisation can solve them alone.
“What makes this Summit important is the involvement of partners and experts from across that ecosystem. We want to create an environment where people can openly address the barriers they are facing, learn from what others are already doing and work together on solutions that are both environmentally meaningful and commercially realistic.”
The Summit will include workshops, working groups and collaborative sessions to help participants share experiences and develop actionable strategies for their organisations.
