The 2025 Cleanroom Technology event in the UK has kicked off for its first morning.
The event runs to help those involved with the design, build and operation of cleanrooms and controlled environments, as well as those who work within one.
The exhibition hosts some of the top suppliers and contractors in the industry, ready to offer their expertise and services. Whilst the conference talks cover the whole lifecycle of a cleanroom, and allow delegates to ask questions to industry-leading speakers.
This evening, there will also be the ever-popular "cleanroom quiz" during the free networking drinks. Many will be keen to see who wins the grand prize this year!
With over 50 exhibitors and almost 400 delegates, the conference is a lively place, with lots of refreshments and networking breaks to get the industry talking.
Day 1
Chairing Day 1 is Tim Triggs, Consultant at Air Techniques International. Then taking the mantle on Day 2 will be Steve Ward from T-Squared Validair. Both these powerhouses from the cleanroom sector will be able to expertly guide the talks and Q&A sessions for the day, making sure delegates get the most out of the subject matter experts at their disposal.
Steve Ward kicked off the day's instructive talks with a talk breaking down how ISO and GMP standards apply to cleanrooms across the world. The cleanroom regulatory landscape can be particularly confusing, and Ward's talk really breaks down what cleanroom owners need to be adhering to in 2025 and beyond. "I have a gut feeling members will vote to refresh ISO14644 Part 1 in the near future," Ward shared with the delegates when they asked questions about the future of the standards.
Next up on the agenda, there was a 15 year look back at a GSK-AstraZeneca investigation on air change rates necessary in cleanrooms. The fascinating talk from ex-AstraZeneca employee Tom Stanway, and Energy & Carbon Reduction Solution's Nigel Lenegan, talks about the findings from this experiment. "We wanted to find a way we [AstraZeneca and GSK] could work together on something we were happy to share information on," Stanway explained.
Lenegan demonstrated in no uncertain way, with huge amounts of data, that the gowning level was the primary way to control contamination, not air change rates. Stanway then took this learning into the design of two new AstraZeneca facilities in China and the UK, which hugely reduced their air change rates, and saved around 50% in running costs in some places.
Keith Beattie from EECO2 asked Stanway and Lenegan why people are not doing this 15 years on, and Lenegan emphasised that people need to come to events like this one, to learn that it is not scary, and is totally possible.
Arthur Lettinga from Elis Cleanrooms then followed with a talk giving delegates a guide to which industry method to use for their cleanroom apparel sterilisation. Lettinga weighed up the pros and cons of autoclaving, gamma irradiation and ETO, in order to give delegates the tools to go back to their facilities and make the right decision for them.
Following the day's first break, Cecilia Pierobon from STERIS Life Sciences gave a talk about contamination control in material transfer.
Pierobon showed a telling time-lapse video of wrapping bowls for safe sterilisation. The video simultaneously showed various techniques and timed them for comparison.
Nigel Lenegan then asked Pierobon about the idea that contamination can creep back in through Tyvek covers when items cool from steam sterilisation. She explained that they have done tests that debunk this theory, contingent on a well-designed sterilisation process that does not cause excessive condensation.
Micronclean was next up to the lectern, with Jamie Kelly and Marta Underwood giving a talk about validation of cleanroom garments, addressing the issues of Annex 1 specifically. Underwood told delegates that Section 7 of Annex 1 has been identified by users as a particular pain point of the new document, covering cleanroom garment qualification. Kelly and Underwood talked about the balancing act of using various tests to decide the maximum number of wears and washes to qualify a garment to for a production process.
The talk ended with an exciting announcement for the first time, that Micronclean will be building the first industrial laundry operationally carbon zero, using a heat pump as part of its efforts. Delegates showed huge interest in the specifics, and are keen to watch this build play out in the future.
For the last talk before lunch, Nataša Štirn from Klimer and Conor Murray from 3dimension, gave a case study on building a Novartis facility. Štirn explained that as a result of the optimisations from the design, Novartis managed to save €57,000 a year. The case study advocates for steering away from air change rates as an input into cleanroom design. Instead, they suggest that this is a number that should be calculated during the design.
We are "custodians" of the future, says Murray. He emphasises that we should all be looking to get rid of wasted energy in our cleanrooms, and this case study shows this exact concept.
Following lunch, Matt Stubbs from Envair and Kristen Heukelbach from HMR London, gave a talk about integrating environmental monitoring systems into an isolator, using a specific example. One of the innovative features that the team talked about was the creation of a cleaning mode. "You don't want the EMS to tell you off when you've done nothing wrong," Stubbs said. The EMS system can alert to an issue when cleaning is being done due to increased particles in the air. Stubbs explained that the new mode allows you to cleaning without "upsetting" the EMS system.
Some interesting questions were posed following the talk from Stubbs and Heukelbach about a special consideration for ignoring real-time monitoring data under specific circumstances, that is allowed within regulatory boundaries.
The following talk was supposed to be given by Matts Ramstorp, but sadly Ramstorp was unable to give his talk due to circumstances outside of his control. But the Cleanroom Technology Conference team leapt to make lemonade out of lemons, and put together a panel of experts to answer and discuss delegates' burning questions. Tim Triggs led the panel of Steve Ward, Conor Murray, Hasim Solmaz, and Jason Kelly in a great discussion about the controversial topic of air change rates, special cases for isolator design, as well as challenging your QA team on SOPs.
In the last technical presentation of the day, Marc Mauro from PharmaMedia Dr.Müller, spoke about rapid microbiological testing, specifically automating the readout of cell culture media. Mauro spoke about the need to automate from a labour perspective as the experienced plate readers will not want to do that all day, every day. "They will leave," he says.
The last talk of the day was delivered, not by a cleanroom expert, but by motivational speaker, Bonita Norris.
Norris is the youngest person ever to reach both the top of Mount Everest and the North Pole. Her talk gave a resounding positive note to the end of the conference's first day, encouraging delegates to not live for the end of a project, but to enjoy the process.
The networking drinks and cleanroom drinks, sponsored by Ansell, were a great scene, as per usual. The highest honour of the conference was bestowed upon Team T-S, taking home 10 bottles of wine to share with their team!
Check back tomorrow to see what delegates are enjoying on Day 2 of the Cleanroom Technology Conference!
