Live from Cool Chain Europe: Pharma freight requires specialized cargo center

A new Pharma & Healthcare Hub at Luxembourg’s Findel airport is on track to handle 30,000 tons of ambient and cold-chain temperature-controlled pharmaceutical products in 2014.

It was the critical mass of healthcare and pharmaceutical cargo along with the support of freight forwarder Panalpina and temperature control system provider Antaris Solutions that made possible Luxair Cargo’s new Pharma & Healthcare Hub at Luxembourg’s Findel Airport. That’s according to Jean-Marc Reynaerts, Vice President Business Development for Luxair Cargo, a business unit of Luxair Group, who showed approximately 15 attendees of the Cool Chain & Controlled Room Temperature Logistics Europe event around the new center on the eve of the late-January conference.

The Luxair Cargo center is a 300,000-sq-m facility that opened in 1996 to handle 1.2 million tons of freight/yr, including high-tech goods, perishables, livestock, pharmaceuticals, and consumer products. While controlled-temperature handling has always been a part of its services, it wasn’t until the economic crisis of 2008-2012—when the handling of a range of goods, with the exception of healthcare products, began to slow—that Luxair Cargo realized the potential of a dedicated area within the facility for pharmaceuticals. In April 2013, the 3,000-sq-m Pharma & Healthcare Hub opened, becoming GDP-certified in mid-January.

According to Raynaerts, the center represents an investment of €4 million—a fraction of what it would have cost, he says, had Luxair Cargo expanded its facility to accommodate the hub. Instead, it used existing warehouse space to set up the controlled-temperature operations. The investment, he says, funded training and technology for the new center. Five hundred operators staff the warehouse, while 100 employees work in the office.

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