Bracco Diagnostics Inc
North America All in on Sustainability

How do you define Sustainability, and how does it shape your business model?

Sustainability is one of Bracco’s pillars, connecting our past, present, and future. Bracco thinks about sustainability differently than most companies, embracing it more broadly as a business principle that advances people, innovation, and our planet. Our purpose is to improve people’s lives by shaping the future of prevention and precision imaging.

For instance, Bracco is embracing sustainable transformation with ongoing green initiatives, including a target of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030. We are doing this by transitioning to renewable and self-produced sources of energy, reducing emissions and waste generation, and promoting responsible practices along the entire value chain.

Bracco supports a progressive workplace where employees are valued as collaborators. We foster an inclusive environment that integrates the skills, knowledge, and contributions of every individual. Our global compensation guidelines have the objective of treating all of our people equally; this commitment to equal opportunity helps Bracco retain a highly productive workforce.

How does sustainability relate to employees, customers, and patients?

In terms of building a culture of valuable employees, it’s about what you offer them beyond compensation, and how well the organization is set up to support them. Bracco is a familyowned company, over 95 years strong.

We attract and retain talented, creative people by safeguarding and supporting diversity, gender, and age inclusion, and promoting a healthy work-life balance. Almost half of our new hires in 2021 were under 30 and almost half of our employees are women. Bracco provided over 88,000 hours of employee training in a year. And we are proud to say that many of our employees have remained committed to us for over 20 years.

“We establish sustainable relationships with our customers and their patients - we do this by providing ongoing value.”

An additional value we provide our customers with is educational support for their professional development. Many radiology professionals want training and education in order to advance in their fields. Bracco collaborates with numerous scientific societies and supports online educational events, including webinars with Key Opinion Leaders covering a broad range of important topics. In 2021, Bracco hosted webinars with over 4,000 participants, an achievement we take great pride in.

What are some recent examples of Bracco Innovation?

We believe our relentless focus on innovation - such as major investments in R&D centers and researchers around the world - continues to provide ongoing value to customers and patients that sustains our global business growth. Bracco invests approximately 10% of its annual turnover in R&D each year.

At Bracco, there’s always something to get excited about. We have talented people working on so many things, from our latest advances in imaging agents, X-ray radiography, MRI, ultrasonography, and nuclear medicine through radioactive tracers and novel PET imaging; to medical technologies like cardiovascular and peripheral diagnostics; and in health services, such as precision medicines. Our evolving portfolio is complemented by a range of medical devices, advanced administration systems, and dose-management software.

One example of innovation is the high-relaxivity macrocyclic contrast agent we launched last year in collaboration with Guerbet. Normally, we wouldn’t launch a product with a competitor, but we determined that collaborating would expedite the availability of an advanced agent, so that’s what we did, because we understood the value of that to our customers, and above all, to patients.

But that’s not all - we’re always focused on the future. For example, we have researchers trying to create a phospholipid microbubble for Molecular Imaging applications that can recognize specific endothelial receptors responsible for tumor neoangiogenesis. This development could significantly improve the diagnostic and therapeutic path of cancer patients in particularthose suffering from severe inflammatory forms of it. Another idea being worked on involves creating imaging systems that guide surgeons in an “augmented reality” that helps differentiate between tissue that should be removed and tissue that should be maintained.

We built a new innovation center in Shanghai, fully in operation. Bracco now has 10 global innovation centers, three in the United States: Freemont, Maple Grove, and Eden Prairie. These innovation centers comprise one of the most dynamic knowledge networks in our industry. We also have a history of collaborating with universities, hospitals, and research institutions to incubate ideas and accelerate innovation. In 2021, Bracco was granted over 100 patents around the world, 29 in the United States. At this point, we have over 2,500 patents and counting. We filed 40 new patent applications in 2021 and planned or conducted 20 clinical trials.

In addition, one of our subsidiary companies, Blue Earth Therapeutics, developed an rhPSMA as a therapeutic radiopharmaceutical to help men with advanced prostate cancer. Blue Earth holds the exclusive license for therapeutic applications of PSMA radiohybrid technology. Bracco’s broad portfolio of innovative products, services, and technologies is a direct result of our long-term commitment to R&D. Improving quality of life is an important way we measure success.

What is Bracco doing for Planet Earth?

We are consistently and actively working towards our sustainability goals and keeping track of our progress. We believe there’s a vital role that companies like Bracco can play in protecting the environment by developing advanced production processes, limiting the impact on biodiversity and ecosystems, and managing and limiting waste. Every year we set goals to renew, reduce and recover through green initiatives such as increasing energy efficiency, reducing our energy footprint, lowering emissions, sourcing renewable energy, recovery and reusing raw materials.

Bracco insists on responsible practices in every aspect of our business, from environmental impact to ethical supplychain management. We take a regenerative approach to the entire product lifecycle, reducing waste by recycling and recovery, extending the useful life of products and assets, and making a positive contribution to the circular economy.

The Bracco Sustainability Plan was developed in accordance with the United Nation’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. In keeping with our plan, in 2021, for example, we reduced our use of packaging material by 2.6 tons and increased our use of electricity from renewable sources by 160%. We recovered solvents used in production processes, reduced waste, and performed feasibility studies to install solar photovoltaic fields that will produce green energy.

We put special emphasis on the recovery of iodine. Iodinated Contrast Media (ICMs) are safe in the human body, but there are concerns about by-products entering wastewater and drinking water ecosystems. We seek to mitigate iodine’s end-stage impact by increasing efficiencies in the product life cycle - before, during, and after use in the imaging department. By utilizing the latest technology, we have seen incredible results with advanced reverse osmosis systems that recover approximately 90% of iodine from wastewater that would have been lost.

Our commitment to sustainability extends to our service fleet of hybrid vehicles. Our first hybrid went into service in January 2020; today, we are on course to have at least 70% of our service fleet comprised of hybrid vehicles by the end of 2023, preventing 264,148 kg of CO2 emissions since 2019.

Bracco is a purpose-driven company with a strong sense of mission that drives every decision we make. Our reputation is synonymous with credibility, awareness of our choices and behaviors, reliability of information, and respect for the commitments towards our stakeholders. This is why we joined the UN Global Compact in 2023. Bracco produces an annual Sustainability Report describing our activities and results in each of our core pillars: people, innovation, and planet.