News

A lot has happened in the world of pharmaceutical logistics since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Border closures, Brexit and the recently blocked sea route in the Suez Canal are constantly presenting logistics companies with new challenges. Nevertheless, global supply chains must remain stable, secure and as cost-efficient as possible.

For a long time, the lack of freight capacity made it difficult to work with actively cooled air freight containers. These are needed to safely transport temperature-sensitive and high-quality finished medicinal products by plane. For a while, the limited capacities and difficult return options often made this secure packaging solution unattractive in terms of price – at least for large-volume shipments.

As a result, Pharmaserv Logistics had to make a variety of changes to its shipping processes at short notice. Instead of actively cooled containers, so-called passive boxes were increasingly used. These specially insulated shipping boxes are equipped with preconditioned, i.e. pre-cooled cooling elements. This means that the intended transport temperature in the box can be constantly maintained. The advantage here is that there is no need to return the packaging solution. This is usually offset by the increased handling effort required to repack the goods into the appropriate box volume and to pack the shipping solution itself. However, the effort usually pays off.

Last week, the pharmaceutical logistics company specialising in biologics handled a large order for one of its long-standing customers, shipping 80 pallets of finished pharmaceuticals at 2° to 8°C to Baghdad in Iraq. The challenge was the large packaging volume, the high quantity of cooling elements to be preconditioned and the short period of time for packing to meet the deadline at the departure airport of Cologne/Bonn in order to ensure the longest possible transit time for the thermoboxes.

One advantage in the handling process was that the shipping customer is a so-called “known consignor”, whose goods are considered “safe” from an air freight security perspective. As Pharmaserv Logistics is able to maintain this security status as a “regulated agent”, the goods did not have to be X-rayed in advance. But even this would not have been a problem, as the company has an appropriate X-ray system in its qualified pharmaceutical warehouse. This means that even 2° to 8°C goods can be X-rayed in under 2 minutes while complying with GMP conditions. Another advantage was that Pharmaserv Logistics, as a wholesaler, has a large range of different passive boxes from various manufacturers in stock and therefore available for packaging activities at all times.

During an extra weekend shift, the specially trained employees repacked the goods at the Airfreight Hub Gross-Gerau in such a way that they were packed on 40 Euro pallets and 40 industrial pallets. These in turn were packed into 40 so-called half-PAG shippers. This large-volume passive packaging solution holds 1 Euro pallet and 1 industrial pallet and ensures a temperature of 2° to 8°C.

As the airport of departure had capacity bottlenecks, a diversion had to be taken via Frankfurt Airport. Here, the 40 packages were again packed onto 20 air freight trays, so-called PMCs. These were then transported back to the airport of departure in accordance with GDP. From here, the goods were then transported safely and cost-effectively to Iraq.

It should also be mentioned that the “experts for biologics” had previously supported their customer in creating the required “lane validation”, i.e. a special risk analysis of the planned shipping route. This is required in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that medicines always arrive safely at the recipient's premises. The customer was so impressed with the smooth handling that they wrote to the team afterwards to thank them.

“When our customer praises our team at the end, it makes me proud and shows that we are on the right track with our range of services,” said Dr Martin Egger from the management team in conclusion.