Covid-19 placed significant pressure on the global cool chain, reshaping the landscape for temperature-sensitive shipments.
Supplier relationships were ‘stress tested’ during the pandemic which increased focus in terms of collaboration. These strengthened relationships have been built on since then, honing key solutions in the cold chain arena with a high level of flexibility to cope with ever changing influences due to geographic, politic and environmental causes.
In the wake of the pandemic many global airports increased investment in building, or upgrading cold chain facilities to ensure the proper handling of temperature sensitive cargo.
The real-time monitoring of temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors during transportation has become key, with this technology including data loggers and GPS tracking systems that provide end-to-end visibility of temperature sensitive shipments.
Cargo handlers are also using advanced data driven analytics to support cold chain management. Utilising predictive analysis to avoid potential temperature excursions during transit. This approach is key when developing route risk assessments accessing digital platforms to deliver live, up to date information at lane level.
The partnership with active and passive packaging providers played a key role during the pandemic in terms of vaccine shipments, with a switch from existing cost/carbon heavy active solutions to passive systems where possible considering the route risk assessment.
“With increasing demand for biologics, gene therapies, and personalised medicines, cold chain airfreight is an area requiring increased focus for handling these temperature sensitive shipments,” Edwin Benard, Head of Healthcare Industry Vertical Europe at Yusen Logistics, said.
“At the same time global warming triggers us to come up with innovative solutions to reduce the environmental impact while securing the integrity of the product and timely delivery to the patient. The increase in demand and in requirements is also positively impacting the speed of the development of our network and dictates areas for additional investments.”
Competition
With the pharmacy and life sciences market becoming increasingly competitive, companies are constantly looking to innovate and evolve their businesses to maintain an operational edge.
The growing demand within the cool chain/temperature sensitive sector has triggered Yusen Logistics to setup a global quality organisation able to cope with the increasing requirements and need for network growth.
From a three-facility network in 2017, the company can now offer full global coverage with GDP hubs and warehouses in key locations, with a current total of over 60 hubs worldwide and 30 in development.
At the same time, the company continues to investment in systems, processes and validated solutions and a deep understanding and collaboration with active and passive packaging providers.
“It all starts with listening to the customer and the patient,” Edwin explained. “From that we have determined seven key-rules: To continue to ensure GDP compliance with key focus on cold chain. To continue to optimise our Cold Chain Logistics developing specialised cold chain solutions. Enhance collaboration to improve service delivery. To leverage Data Analytics. Deploy good sustainability practices. Continue our Customer-Centric approach. Continue to Invest in Cybersecurity.”
Digital chain
While the expectation is that the cool chain market will grow at a steady pace, the industry sees an increase in demand with a focus on cost effective, compliant and sustainable solutions.
“We are using our digital HealthCare solution to integrate our and our partners different operational platforms to coordinate multimodal shipments seamlessly while visualising end-to-end tracking and inventory management to our customers. Yusen Logistics offers flexible mode choice via the integration of transportation options to suit different customer requirements,” Edwin outlined.
“With the use of market leading integration products we can now give our customers visibility of their supply chain by direct integration with their ERP platforms and or via a web based visibility layer that gives live updates from our systems of record (TMS) and third party service supplier portals (temperature monitoring, shipment tracking and reporting).
“Our integration product allows flexibility on how we can connect through APIs and EDI depending on the maturity of our customers systems. The digital developments have enabled us to offer visibility not only as to where a shipment is or when it will be delivered, it also allows us to report the real-time temperature, door opening alerts, route deviations and the actual co2 emission to name a few. The ability to connect practically everything in the chain allows our customer to better manage their logistics. With visibility on shipments and items and even on stock-levels end-to-end from manufacturing to end-destination.”
