Recognising the importance of developing air cargo supply chains to handle and transport pharmaceuticals, especially for the last mile delivery, in humanitarian contexts or in crisis situations, Pharma.Aero and HLA have established a formal basis of collaboration by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

This collaboration will not only underline common interests between the two organisations, but also enable both organisations to combine forces in strategic projects that will improve quality in global air cargo industry, with a focus on crisis-prone countries, as well as emergencies and humanitarian projects.

Jeremy Mitchell, director of Pharma.Aero stresses the importance of this new collaboration: “By joining forces with HLA, we bring the Human Interest aspect into the Pharma.Aero network and platform. This will create more leverage and added value in all our undertakings as well as broaden our scope and impact when reaching out to the entire pharmaceutical air cargo supply chain.”

“HLA aims to increase understanding and forge alliances between aid organisations, the private, public and academic sectors,” adds George Fenton, chief executive of HLA. “The newly formed partnership with Pharma.Aero will enable us to add significant value to our network and gear up the effectiveness and efficiency of members by raising awareness of standards, facilitating access to training and career development opportunities, and encourage collaboration among a broader range of humanitarian logisticians.”

Trevor Caswell, vice chairman Pharma.Aero and responsible for Projects, points out that “both organisations share the same vision: being a neutral platform of international best-practice and knowledge sharing, and fostering community collaboration by trust. In setting up joint projects that emphasise the growing importance – both for the rapidly changing aid system as well as for the supply chain – of ‘local actors’ and ‘last mile’, we can create added value: to look at ways to improve reaching difficult places via UAV technology will be one of our first joint projects.”