PharmaSource Podcast

"The quality of any relationship becomes most visible during times of challenge and pressure," says Frederik Krekeler.
Frederik Krekeler is Head of Procurement for Bayer's Consumer Health business in North America, leading sourcing strategy and supplier partnerships across a critical global network. With over 20 years of supply chain leadership spanning Europe, Latin America, and North America, he is known for building strategic CDMO relationships that deliver both resilience and commercial performance.
Ahead of CDMO Live Americas (20-21 October, Boston), Frederik shares the principles behind Bayer's approach to CDMO partnership management, covering the multi-year network reset of Project Martini, the innovation days and Negotiation Factory programs that keep suppliers engaged year-round. For anyone managing external manufacturing relationships in a rapidly evolving market, it's a practical and candid playbook.
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At CDMO Live Europe 2026, Dr. Adriana Kiedzierska-Mencfeld, Chief Executive Officer of Rezon Bio, drew on 11 years of leading operations at Polpharma Biologics to explain why biosimilar developers must address cost strategy in process development, long before any product reaches market.

“CMC was not usually a core part of the planning — it was more of an afterthought. Now that funding has tightened, that is changing.”
Siddhartha Jain, President of Shoolin Management Company, has spent two decades in biologics CMC across Novartis, Regeneron, Sanofi, and other major companies, contributing to the development and manufacturing of over 10 clinical and commercial molecules.
In this episode of the PharmaSource podcast, Sid shares why raw material variability remains one of the industry’s most underestimated risks, what separates a technically proficient CDMO from one that is merely experienced, and why digital CMC transformation fails when it ignores people and process.
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At CDMO Live Europe 2025, a panel of procurement and commercial leaders argued that the most consequential CDMO negotiations happen after the contract is signed, covering risk-sharing structures, governance discipline, and the conditions under which trust compounds or collapses.
The session was chaired by Matthew Holt, Co-Founder of Collaborative Sourcing, with panelists Salomon Engels, Head of External Manufacturing at Par Health; Mark Goemans, Chief Commercial Officer at Bora Biologics; and Thomas Thunnissen, Director of Procurement and Partnerships at Leyden Labs. The discussion moved through four stages of the partnership life cycle: initial negotiation, contract construction, governance, and risk-sharing.
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Gil Roth, President of the Pharma & Biopharma Outsourcing Association (PBOA), walked CDMO Live Europe delegates through the full matrix of US policy pressures bearing on contract manufacturers, from Section 232 tariffs and most favored nation pricing to FDA workforce collapse and a stalled BioSecure Act.
Read the full article here.