Supply chain & logistics
Regulators lifted restrictions on dry ice during the pandemic to prevent temperature excursions jeopardising vaccine shipments.
to the costs. In products such as vaccines or biologics, maintaining control of the cold chain at every stage of the transportation is essential. This is particularly important at points of transition, notes Wim van der Schouw, a senior logistics consultant with a background working in pharmaceutical cold chain transportation. “In harbours where they change road freight into sea freight or sea freight into road freight, these terminals must be controlled very stringently,” he explains. Indeed, cold chain breaches account for about 20% of the damage that occurs to temperature-sensitive products in transit. Traditionally, the safer option for maintaining the cold chain is to transport the goods by air, because the journey is so much shorter. Having to keep a product at the required temperature for hours is easier than keeping it at that temperature for weeks or months. There are, however, those who argue that there are often more disruptions by air, caused by poor weather, customs problems or the misloading of cargo – leading to more temperature excursions. Some pharma companies that use air freight have moved from passive packaging solutions (such as dry ice or gel packs, combined with thermal blankets for insulation) to active – but more expensive – solutions such as Envirotainers, which use electrical cooling systems that can adjust for ambient temperatures. It’s also the case that the storage technology used in sea freight has improved greatly in recent years. Temperature-controlled reefers have backup systems in case of failure, while satellite technology
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enables the temperature to be monitored remotely, sending out alerts if a deviation in temperature is observed. This means that for pharma companies who want a low-cost, environmentally friendly solution, the cold chain requirements are no longer necessarily a barrier to using sea freight.
Mix and match
Some companies, says Zollondz, have chosen to maximise efficiency while minimising carbon footprint by combining air and sea – an approach known as intermodal transport: “You do one part of the shipment, for example from Asia to the Middle East, by ocean, and then they have big cargo airports close to the port, and they convert it for the last mile to air freight.”
Road transport is often used to transport pharma products between European countries, and is less risky than either sea or air, van der Schouw points out: “There are always terminals [in sea and air transport] that don’t manage the GDP guidelines as stringently as they should.”
While in some cases, the decision to use sea or air is black-and-white – sea for low-value mass market products with a long shelf life, and air for new, high-value products shipped in small quantities – there is a large grey area in the middle where the decision is not clear-cut. Considerations such as cost, cold chain requirements and environmental targets all play their part, and technology is developing at a pace that closes a gap that once seemed wide. ●
World Pharmaceutical Frontiers /
www.worldpharmaceuticals.net
Elzbieta Krzysztof/
www.shutterstock.com
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