diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index 780daa18..94cd2cca 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -16,6 +16,9 @@ RUN make test-all
 FROM --platform=${BUILDPLATFORM} registry.access.redhat.com/ubi8/python-311:latest AS builder
 USER root
 RUN dnf -y upgrade && dnf -y install pcre-devel \
+    && dnf -y remove emacs-filesystem libjpeg-turbo libtiff libpng wget \
+    && dnf -y autoremove \
+    && dnf clean all \
     && python -m venv /venv \
     && mkdir /build
 ENV VIRTUAL_ENV=/venv
@@ -23,6 +26,7 @@ ENV PATH="${VIRTUAL_ENV}/bin:${PATH}"
 WORKDIR /build
 COPY ./ ./
 RUN "${VIRTUAL_ENV}/bin/pip" install --upgrade pip \
+    && "${VIRTUAL_ENV}/bin/pip" install --upgrade setuptools \
     && LIBRARY_PATH=/lib:/usr/lib /bin/sh -c "${VIRTUAL_ENV}/bin/pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt" \
     && "${VIRTUAL_ENV}/bin/python3" -m nltk.downloader -d /usr/share/nltk_data stopwords
 ARG APP_VERSION=""
@@ -40,19 +44,19 @@ WORKDIR /backend/
 COPY --from=builder /backend ./
 COPY --from=builder /venv /venv
 COPY --from=builder /usr/share/nltk_data /usr/share/nltk_data/
-ENV VIRTUAL_ENV="/venv"
 RUN dnf -y upgrade && dnf -y install libgomp pcre-devel \
     && dnf -y remove emacs-filesystem libjpeg-turbo libtiff libpng wget \
     && dnf -y autoremove \
     && dnf clean all \
-    && "${VIRTUAL_ENV}/bin/pip" install --upgrade pip \
-    && "${VIRTUAL_ENV}/bin/pip" install --upgrade setuptools \
+    && pip install --upgrade pip \
+    && pip install --upgrade setuptools \
     && mkdir -p -m 0700 /backend/storage \
     && groupadd uwsgi && useradd -g uwsgi uwsgi \
     && chown -R uwsgi: /usr/share/nltk_data \
     && chown -R uwsgi: /backend
 USER uwsgi
 EXPOSE 5001
+ENV VIRTUAL_ENV="/venv"
 # uWSGI configuration (customize as needed):
 ENV PATH="${VIRTUAL_ENV}/bin:${PATH}" PYTHONPATH=/backend \
     FLASK_APP=app/main.py UWSGI_WSGI_FILE=app/main.py UWSGI_SOCKET=:3031 UWSGI_HTTP=:5001 \