A breath of fresh air – Designing a sustainable future
As the inhalation and nasal drug delivery industry moves into the next generation, the challenges surrounding design, development, and manufacture are becoming more complex. Time and cost pressures continue to rise, and sustainability expectations are becoming more ambitious. Whilst there is no single path to success, bringing together diverse expertise and fresh perspectives makes it far easier to navigate these challenges and deliver truly innovative solutions.
Collaboration at Bespak extends beyond our internal teams and formal partnerships. That’s why I recently visited our Cambridge-based design house partners. Fostering diversity of thought and fuelling creativity, design houses facilitate idea generation that pushes beyond traditional approaches and explores new solutions for patients and the environment alike. Having worked with these design houses over the years, it was a great opportunity to catch up, see what they were working on and explore alignment in our respective organisational goals.
The value of design houses
Cambridge in the UK is a globally recognised centre of innovative research, and scientific and engineering excellence. With a breadth of multi-disciplinary expertise and a strong culture for lateral thinking, design houses can offer engineering support, as well as design-for-manufacturing insight, strategic guidance, and fresh perspectives that help companies push beyond their immediate niche and accelerate meaningful innovation.
What stood out to me during these visits was threefold: the breadth of experience brought from outside of Pharma being the first. The design houses we visited bring knowledge from aerospace, consumer technology, sports performance, deep tech, and medical devices. This multi-disciplinary expertise, combined with a culture of lateral problem-solving, allows these organisations to offer far more than traditional engineering support.
Second, the remarkable depth of engineering knowledge and world-class facilities concentrated in and around Cambridge. Many of these companies have spun out of the University of Cambridge and bring thousands of people-years of engineering experience to bear. Facilities range from innovation labs and pilot plants to human factors testing suites and market research studios, creating an environment where ideas can be tested, refined, and validated rapidly.
And third, the strong appetite for collaboration. These design houses operate with confidentiality at their core and have a long history of supporting pharmaceutical development alongside broader industrial projects. By combining their early-stage concept generation with Bespak’s modelling, simulation, and manufacturing expertise, we can explore a truly synergistic approach to innovation. For example, design house concepts for sustainable inhaler materials can be rapidly assessed and optimised using Bespak’s in silico modelling expertise combined with our injection moulding capabilities, creating a pathway from innovative idea to scalable, patient-ready product.
Building cross-industry networks
Our proximity to Cambridge from our King’s Lynn site gives us direct access to design houses and the emerging research, technologies, and insights developing across the so-called Golden Triangle (the global knowledge centre made up of Cambridge, Oxford & London). These organisations naturally sit between academia and industry, and collaboration with them allows Bespak to stay ahead of emerging technologies, helping refresh our technical strategy by spotlighting new areas of focus. A holistic view of cross-industry trends informs strategic planning and decision making, enabling us to embed flexibility into our road mapping so that we can comfortably pivot, if needed, to align with evolving industry requirements.
Building new collaborative networks and breathing life into our existing partnerships is a strategic priority at this exciting time, as the new Bespak has a lot to offer. Our specialist inhalation expertise, product development and manufacturing capabilities, and cutting-edge technological developments are industry leading. Whilst design houses are excellent for new perspectives, we also support them in return. Our discussions with The Technology Partnership, Team Consulting, Cambridge Design Partnership, PA Consulting and Cambridge Consultants have given us much food for thought, and we are looking forward to putting our joint ideas into motion.
Establishing Bespak as a future-facing collaborator helps us keep our partners ahead of the curve, and we look forward to exploring the opportunities for shared growth these forthcoming partnerships will bring.
Collaboration for sustainable advancement
From conversations with our partners, it is apparent that sustainability is now more than a “buzzword”, it is an expectation. For Bespak, it is an essential pillar of our operational strategy, and we are building upon the groundwork outlined in our 2024 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report and working towards sustainable decarbonisation. However, embedding sustainability into the supply chain is a complex undertaking, requiring long-term planning and a multifaceted approach.
Moving beyond the “quick-wins”, we are currently exploring how technology and cross-industry insight can be leveraged to optimise and future-proof our processes and portfolios. Our goal is to integrate sustainable practices into every stage of product development, from conception to launch, through synergistic collaboration.
Design houses play an important role here. Beyond helping us refine device or component design, they bring sustainability approaches from consumer industries that pharma hasn’t traditionally adopted, such as lightweighting, modular design, improved material choice, recyclability, or design-for-disassembly.
For example, a design house may assist with improving product sustainability by suggesting design modifications to allow for recycling or to reduce mass to lower the carbon cost of transportation. They may also provide logistical insight into the use of different materials, such as bio-resins instead of oil-based polymers. By pooling cross-industry knowledge and diverse perspectives to tackle these complex challenges effectively, we will make sustainable practices a reality.
Bespak as a technological innovator
Our commitment to modelling and in silico science is a core enabler of our sustainability and innovation agenda. As a member of the UK Centre of Excellence on in silico Regulatory Science & Innovation (UKCEiRSI), we are helping shape the future of digital product development.
In silico models show significant promise in helping speed up new product development and are laying the groundwork for personalised medicine. We have made significant headway in this space, with breakthroughs advancing both patient care and the cultivation of sustainable practices to help ensure we and our partners stay ahead of changing regulation.
A key example is our recent collaboration with Ansys where Artificial Intelligence and advanced simulation tools provided a comprehensive understanding of the design space of pressurised Metered Dose Inhalers (pMDIs). Mapping the design space allowed for robust design optimisation, which reduced operational waste and also improved product performance. This significant achievement moves us closer to rooting sustainability into the core of inhaler design, helping us achieve our higher sustainability ambitions.
Responding to industry trends
Digital tools also played a central role for Resyca, our joint venture with Medspray, in developing the soft mist technology transforming next-generation inhalation and nasal devices. Named after the low shear, gentle nebulisation process used to create a slow-moving aerosol cloud, soft mist is optimised for accurate, high-dose deposition, and is setting the new standard for pulmonary and nasal drug delivery. Soft mist is ideal for delicate molecules, and provides innovative opportunities for treating non-respiratory conditions, such as CNS therapies and nasal vaccines — biologics are an incredibly exciting avenue of exploration!
Interest in nasal delivery is rising rapidly, particularly for nose-to-brain administration. While the route offers clear advantages, it also brings complex challenges in formulation and device development. This is where specialist inhalation CDMOs like Bespak are increasingly relied upon for end-to-end expertise. As innovators look to move faster and more sustainably, collaboration becomes a key differentiator, enabling quicker iteration, lower risk, and a smoother path to market.
Looking forward
As I enter my second year as Chief Technical Officer at Bespak, I am proud of our creative and collaborative approach and am very pleased with what we have achieved. We are leading the green transition to low global warming potential (GWP) propellants in pMDIs, confidently guiding our customers through this time of significant industry change. Beyond this, we will continue to push boundaries and pioneer new in silico technologies to design new products with sustainability factored in from conception, and to continuously optimise our existing products. As the needs of our patients and clients evolve, so must we.
