Pfizer’s Freiburg,
Germany plant
is the company’s largest packaging facility and a strategic manufacturing site.
In 2008, 8 billion tablets and capsules were packaged into 230 million packs
comprising medicines to treat a variety of diseases.
The site’s SPRING-E MAP (Strategic Plant Restructuring
Energy Master Plan) was designed and implemented to optimize the manufacturing
and packaging operations on the site and prove that cost savings and
sustainability were not mutually exclusive.
The success of the project and its implementation of cutting
edge technologies resulted in the facility winning the 2011 Facility of the
Year Award for Sustainability, jointly sponsored by ISPE, INTERPHEX and
Pharmaceutical Processing magazine.
Sustainability: The Goal From The Start
The team at Pfizer’s Freiburg
plant held the strong belief and philosophy that cost-savings and environmental
responsibility could go hand in hand. To determine how best to do this at Freiburg, the team put together a plan that eventually
led to five major projects and more than 200 smaller projects all aimed to
implement cost and energy efficient technologies.
The main technologies implemented at Freiburg
include:
• Geothermal heating and cooling of office buildings
• Biomass steam for pharmaceutical manufacturing and
packaging
• Biomass absorption cooling for pharmaceutical
manufacturing and packaging
• Adiabatic cooling for laboratories and high efficiency
manufacturing areas
• Photovoltaic for electricity generation
Green Achievements
The result of implementing a wide array of green
technologies has led to some remarkable achievements. For example, the site’s
greenhouse gas emissions were cut by 80%. Considering that European Union
provisions on reducing gas emissions target a 20% reduction by the year 2020
you can see how impressive this achievement really is. In addition, the change
to renewable energy sources means that 91% of the site’s primary energy is
generated from these sources.
While the results are certainly impressive, perhaps more
noteworthy is the fact that these achievements were accomplished by making
renovations and improvements to an existing facility. When asked about the
challenges of renovating a facility to meet sustainability goals in comparison
to working from a clean sheet and designing them into a new facility, Michael
Becker, Director of Engineering at Freiburg commented, “Here you have to
separate two cases, first - the technology and second - the green strategy. It
was clear that we could not use every technology because the buildings and
environment were given and we had to integrate the technologies into that
environment. But we had a clear strategy in our "Energy and Resource
Conservation Master Plan" which was the basis for the design so that helped
us to achieve the green targets.”
With a project of this size and scope one of the inevitable
questions is when does all this green technology start paying dividends.
According to Becker, in some instances this has already occurred. “The majority
of projects had a break even point approximately 2.5 years from implementation
and, depending on the actual installation time, some of the projects have
already achieved this. By implementing these technologies we were able to show
that we could combine ‘economical and ecological” targets. We proved that
getting Freiburg more competitive and
‘healthier’ were complementary goals.”
Europe’s Largest
Wood-Pellet Boiler
At Freiburg, the boiler house has been switched over to
biomass fuel, resulting in Pfizer installing and operating Europe’s
largest wood pellet boiler. By modernizing the facility this way the company
saves the environment 5,500 tons of carbon dioxide annually as well as
six-figures in heating costs.
The wood pellet steam boiler system replaces two of four
existing boiler systems which were built in 1962, and provide approximately 85%
of the heat and steam required at the location.
Wood pellets are produced from dried, untreated residue wood
(sawdust, shavings, residue wood from the forest) with a diameter of approximately
6 - 8 mm and a length of 5 - 45 mm. They are compressed under high pressure
without adding chemical binding agents, and have a heat value of around 5
kWh/kg. The energy content of one kilogram of pellets corresponds to about half
a liter of heating oil.
In an integrated and sustainable fuel cycle, sawmills from
Buchenbach and Kehl in the nearby Black Forest
supply the biomass fuel for the wood pellet steam boiler. With an annual
production capacity of over 200,000 tons, the works have sufficient capacity to
supply Pfizer GmbH with their annual requirement of around 5,000 tons. The
proximity between pellet production and combustion further improves the
ecological balance sheet thanks to the short transport distances.
For an industry that is usually reluctant to change, the use
of the wood pellet boiler was a daring choice. “The technology was not solely
designed for pharmaceutical facilities,” say Becker, “but we designed it for
use in our facility.” Becker continues, “The boiler is embedded into our
building monitoring system to provide the necessary reliability for
pharmaceutical processes and GMP´s. It is fully automated and its operation is
fully embedded in our highly automated facility. One example of this is that
the wood pellets can be automatically transported into the boiler via pneumatic
hoppers which is much cleaner and eliminates manual handling.”
Local Expertise
With such advanced technologies implemented, you might think
the Freiburg team had to scour the globe looking for experts, but in fact the
expertise needed was found locally, as Becker explains, “Freiburg is know as
the "Green City" of Germany meaning there are a lot of companies with
expertise in "Green Technologies" and we used that benefit to work
with different vendors and the (local) university. In this case we had a very
agile partner on site and all the systems we installed were "Right First
Time". That meant timelines were met, targets were achieved and very
importantly; continuous improvement processes could be adapted to increase
efficiencies.”
Judges Reaction
The Facility of the Year Award judges were obviously
impressed with Pfizer’s accomplishments at Freiburg.
In fact, in their comments the judges said that in their opinion this project
is truly what sustainability is all about. Adding that they were most impressed
with how Freiburg engineered a long term
sustainability program that is unparalleled in pharmaceutical
manufacturing.
The facility has received a lot attention both from within
Pfizer and from other pharmaceutical companies. “Freiburg
is seen as a ‘Green Lighthouse’ within Pfizer,” says Becker. “We have a lot of
visitors looking at the technologies - from within and also external companies.
We try to help them with our experience.” n