Worldwide Flight Services has invested €10 million in a Pharma Centre at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, making it the only ground handler to own a pharma facility at CDG.
The pharma centre offers both landside and airside acceptance capabilities and will be fully GDP compliant when it opens in September.
It will also be IATA CEIV Pharma certified as part of a Groupe ADP initiative within the airport’s cargo community.
The 2,400 m2 dedicated space, located in the heart of CDG airport’s cargo area has its own docks and manoeuvring area for loading and unloading of temperature-controlled pharmaceutical shipments.
Dedicated rooms are provided for loose cargo storage at 15-25C, a cold room at 2-8C, a freezing room and two temperature-controlled areas for 2-25C to store unit load devices.
WFS is also investing in digital technology systems with the warehouse management system supporting the use of barcode scanning for real-time storage capacity monitoring and management.
A temperature monitoring solution with a Cloud platform will collect temperature and humidity data in real-time via sensors, accessible on mobile devices.
Hugo Rodrigues, vice president cargo France at WFS says: “At a major air cargo gateway like Paris CDG, we believe it is incumbent on ground handlers to invest in the right equipment to handle pharma products. Once again, this demonstrates WFS’ willingness to invest in new, state-of-the-art facilities when we see opportunities to benefit our customers and our own business.”