2024’s Top Supply Chain Issues Revealed in PSCI’s Latest Materiality Assessment

The Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Initiative (PSCI) has revealed their latest ‘materiality’ review for the pharma supply chain.

PSCI members scored a range of supply chain issues against two categories:

  1. Business or financial impact with highest scores attributed to issues with most specific relevance to Pharma over other industries, a clear pathway to remediation, and with a global impact.
  2. Planetary impact with highest scores to issues  prioritised by certain stakeholder groups, having a significant impact on cost of doing business or ability to innovate

6 leading issues

The issues ranked the highest for both financial and planetary impact include:

  • Anti-bribery and corruption – processes to prohibit corruption in the value chain
  • Pharmaceuticals in the Environment (PiE) and Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) – controlling the release of active ingredients, including those with the potential to lead to AMR.
  • Decarbonisation – reducing carbon emissions from the value chain.
  • Climate resilience – the resilience of supply chains to the weather and other changes that will result from a changing climate
  • Biosafety – containment of biological substances in a labour manufacturing context
  • Responsible lobbying – ensuring political engagement is transparent and aligned with the public interest

“This year’s assessment highlights the growing importance of robust supply chain programs, encompassing a wider range of issues. It also reflects the changing nature of the industry’s products and markets, with biosafety joining the list for the first time and the issue of substandard and falsified medicines gaining prominence. 

Tackling climate change remains essential, as does responsible business practice against bribery and corruption.”

Dr. Deirdre O’Reilly, Global EH&S Supplier Operations, and Business Development Lead,  Viatris & PSCI Chair

This PSCI is the pharma industy’s top membership body driving a vision of excellence in safety, environmental, and social outcomes across the global pharma and healthcare value chain.

The analysis was based on desk research along with member inputs to score issues using a framework aligned with EFRAG’s double materiality guidance. Throughout the assessment and scoring, a ‘patient lens’ was applied, considering how patients could be impacted.

The assessment is intended to represent the sector as a whole, and the weighting of issues will be different for individual companies de depending on product mix, geography, ownership etc.

The PSCI encourage the industry to use it as an input to their own planning processes. 


PSCI is the official sustainability partner to CDMO Live.

Don’t miss this interactive roundtable hosted by Robert Williams, PSCI Vice Chair & Director of Sustainable Procurement at AstraZeneca: Strategies for reducing scope 3 emissions with manufacturing partners

In this session we invite peers to share their tried-and-tested strategies for reducing Scope 3 emissions by fostering sustainability in manufacturing partnerships.

The conversation will cover:

  • Evaluating Scope 3 Emissions. Understand the impact of indirect emissions and identify areas ripe for improvement.
  • Implementing Supplier-Centric Strategies. Develop tailored approaches to engage suppliers in emission reduction efforts.
  • Navigating Reporting Challenges. Standardise measurement frameworks and guide supplier goal-setting for effective disclosure.

Register here to join the roundtable

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