Great things come in cold packages: COVID vaccines and cool-chain logistics

In January, a small shipment of COVID-19 vaccines arrived in a remote village in northwestern Finland. When a worker in the town’s health care facility scanned the vaccine container’s QR data logger, they were alerted there had been a temperature incursion, leaving just six hours for the vaccines to be put to use before they spoiled. Six hours is a small, vital window of time, and it was gained thanks to advances in packaging and shipment technology. According to Lauri Erik Lehikoinen, senior vice president of global sales at Logmore, the startup behind the data loggers used in the shipment, use of a traditional USB logger would have facilitated a much slower data transfer, likely causing the vaccines to spoil. “We enabled the nurses to act faster,” Lehikoinen told Air Cargo World . “They were able to [inject the vaccines] on time.” The example serves as a reminder of the importance of shipping innovation and last-mile handling, which have never before been so critical. The vaccines themselves are just a small part of what’s at stake. Each spoiled dose represents not only wasted effort on the part of vaccine producers, carriers and handlers, but also a threat to human life, especially in cases like the one in rural Finland, where infrastructure is weak and the effort invested in each shipment is herculean. Passive packaging, active innovation Although the vaccine rollout is just beginning, favor within the industry has already landed firmly with passive — as opposed to active — packaging solutions. Many vaccines are being transported in containers produced as the result of partnerships between vaccine and packaging manufacturers, according to Frank van Gelder, secretary general of Pharma.Aero. The nonprofit organization based in Brussels is a cross-industry collaborative effort uniting airports, pharma shippers and other stakeholders to effectively transport pharmaceuticals around the world. Because no one wanted to risk being the first one to ship out vaccines in insufficient packaging, “ in the past couple of months, behind closed doors, [vaccine manufacturers] invested in their own packaging,” van Gelder said. These custom packaging solutions, like the temperature-controlled Softbox designed for Pfizer, tend to be passive solutions, according to van Gelder, regardless of the temperature range required. “If it’s -70 C, there's only dry ice solutions you can use.” Meanwhile, vaccines that need to be kept at -20 C can use phase-change packing solutions, like gel packs. Once the required temperature gets as high as -2 or -8 C, relatively simple cold packs are the easiest option. More innovations in container technology are likely on the horizon. Though container manufacturers that are already partnered with vaccine manufacturers have an edge when it comes to designing vaccine-ready packages, they won’t be able to dominate the industry forever, said Nathan De Valck, chairman of Pharma.Aero. “I'm sure that distributions will be copied, and multiple packaging solutions will be made available to the market depending on the specific requirements of the vaccines,” he said. But while vaccine packaging tends to be passive, industry players are not. Last August, UPS began construction on freezer farms in both Louisville, Ky. and the Netherlands in order to handle a projected bump in weekly vaccine shipments after approval of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Meanwhile, Stirling Ultracold, designer and manufacturer of ULT freezers typically used for life science and bio-pharma research, in January sold some of its portable freezers to the U.S. State Department and Puerto Rico to ship vaccines. Other freezers on the market are compressor-based, which limits their temperature ranges, explained Dusty Tenney, CEO of Stirling Ultracold. On the other hand, Stirling Ultracold’s freezers use a patented engine and thermosiphon for cooling, which enables the freezers to maintain a temperature range of -20 C to -86 C, meeting the requirements for both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. The Stirling freezers are the only type currently on the market with this capability, and the company has already begun working with other countries and regions in order to deliver more freezers, Tenney said. Meanwhile, UPS’ freezer farms have yet to see any utilization for COVID vaccine storage, as the flow of vaccines in the express networks remains steady. While the priority of any vaccine shipment is successful transport without temperature incursions or spoilage, cost optimization has been a consistent challenge during the initial rollout, according to Madhav Kurup, CEO of Hellmann Worldwide Logistics for the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The ability to lower existing costs and still produce effective packaging is a priority and could lead to innovation, Kurup predicted. Reverse logistics for packaging will also play a critical role. Historically, the cost of reverse logistics has hindered its development, according to Logmore’s Lehikoinen, who said, “ it's how the supply chain has been structured.” Reverse logistics hasn’t been shown to be of much financial benefit to key industry players, making it easier to overlook in the past, he said. “It’s easy to just leave a package someplace in the woods in Finland,” but reverse logistics are a “must” as vaccine shipments begin to create higher demand among packaging providers. A lack of containers for packaging could lead to a “normal supply-and-demand situation,” according to Kurup, who questioned whether packaging manufacturers would be able to scale up their production operations to meet the needs of vaccine shipments. However, he surmised that there may be “new parties coming up to face the challenges and scaling up their operations as we speak.” Logmore, which scored 4.5 million euros for its QR data loggers in a highly successful funding round in April 2020, may be one of those “new parties.” The startup has focused on ensuring containers are reused or repurposed, despite the fact that the focus on return logistics and reducing waste have created higher initial costs for the company, Lehikoinen said. Recently, Logmore has partnered with French cold chain solution provider Sofrigam to create a package that integrates Logmore’s data-tracking technology with Sofrigam’s reusable thermal packaging. “R everse logistics is a very, very tough challenge. But we are really demanding to be able to utilize all of the boxes, all of the logger units ... multiple times,” Lehikoinen said. The home stretch While packaging shortages have the potential to create challenges later in the vaccine rollout process, middle- and last-mile mishandling poses a more immediate threat. Industry stakeholders identified a range of discrete problems, from variations in regulation by country and region, to available cooler space at airports, to the lack of experience of some last-mile handlers. “The last mile is way more difficult to discuss because it's driven by population density, by country policies, and by how certain countries are organized inside their borders,” said Pharma.Aero’ s van Gelder. This holds especially true for regions like the Middle East, where infrastructure quality and handling processes differ considerably from country to country, and where delicate pharma shipments have historically had their integrity endangered by long wait times on hot runway tarmac, according to Hellmann’s Kurup. Cooler space at the airports where the vaccines arrive could be an issue as well, said Emir Pineda, of the joint task force between Pharma.Aero and The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA). “When you move on to the Caribbean and into Latin America … those countries have less infrastructure in place to handle the distribution of the vaccines. There's not enough cooler space in many places,” he said. There’s also the issue of handling, especially as the middle mile approaches the last mile. By the last mile, logistics experts like freight forwarders Hellmann have largely exited the process, leaving vulnerable shipments in the hands of those who may lack cold chain logistics experience. Depending on the region, there is “different expertise available,” Kurup said. In other cases, it’s not qualified handlers who are missing, but validated processes. “This is a new process for the people who are making the decisions, particularly at the government level,” said Kurup. “They probably want to make sure that the product is arriving at the fastest possible route to the respective countries, but may miss critical elements in supply chain planning.” Some forwarders have been working to actively counter last-mile spoilage with the use of proprietary technology. Kuehne+Nagel, for instance, has been making use of their temperature pods, reefer-sized containers with deep-freeze capabilities. The pods were specifically designed with rural and developing regions in mind, according to a company release. Kuehne+Nagel’s approach shows marked similarities to Crane Worldwide Logistics’ 600-mile radius distribution model for vaccine distribution in the U.S. From major airports, the 3PL looks to fill gaps in pre-existing cold storage facilities by utilizing “mobile, temperature-controlled units” for distribution to the surrounding 600-mile radius, as previously reported by Air Cargo World . “We're locating those in conference centers, malls, parking lots, you name it, to be able to respond to give the country a better option to ensure quality, closer to the point of dispensing,” said Rob Coyle, senior vice president of pharma and health care strategy at Kuehne+Nagel. “ That's something that we're actively involved in and exploring with many governments and countries today.” Ultimately, concerns like cost and handler capability must bow to the ultimate goal— delivering vaccines to their intended destination intact — if the rollout is to be successful. Keeping cool as distribution heats up The International Federation of Freight Forwarders (FIATA) last month stated that “ the industry will not see an overwhelming surge of consignments, which would strain the ability of both the freight forwarders and other stakeholders to transport this precious and urgent cargo.” Conversely, Kurup noted that “Once the billions of doses required start moving from countries like India and China, I think that’s when the huge capacity constraint will come. This probably could be in the second half of this year. But, according to estimates from Cargo Facts Consulting, vaccine shipments will account for 117,000 tonnes of airfreight distributed across the globe — not enough to have more than a modest impact on the capacity constraints already affecting the market. At the same time, numerous carriers have committed to prioritizing vaccine transport, such as the sixteen carriers partnering with UNICEF for scheduled vaccine flights. The alliance is circumglobal, with participants including Lufthansa, Emirates, Ethiopian Airlines, Korean Air, United Airlines and others. Thanks to commitments like these, Pharma.Aero’s Pineda is confident that the industry remains prepared for whatever comes next. “There will be issues,” he said, “and the good thing is that this industry is prepared. It’s flexible to handle the challenges when things go wrong.” Air Cargo World echoes Pineda’s sentiment and remains confident that whatever turbulence lies ahead, the industry is fit to weather it and see a successful COVID vaccine distribution through to the end.

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