CONVERTING AIR TO OCEAN PHARMA SHIPMENTS

MAERSK PHARMA leads the way for Air to Ocean conversion – A RELIABLE SOLUTION

Supply chains are struggling with fragmentation of data, low visibility, and low levels of collaboration between partners, which is costly to organize. By using technology, we see an opportunity to support our customers’ evolving needs and future growth. Becoming an integrator of truly integrated logistics, it is important to connect and simplify global supply chains to provide customers with a simple end-to-end offering of products and services. For us at Maersk it is important to work with industry partners and customers to plan and develop supply chains in a more sustainable way. Maersk will continue to explore several carbon neutral fuel pathways and expects multiple solutions to exist in the future. We are launching the world’s first carbon neutral liner vessel in 2023 and have ordered more vessels. The future vessels will have dual fuel technology installed, enabling either carbon neutral operations or operation on standard very low sulphur fuel oil. As an asset owner who controls the operations, we at Maersk can offer reliability, available ship, and container capacity and best in practice operational excellence to our customers to explore ocean transportation growth instead of air freight.

Here I wanted to share with you how we help our customers ship pharmaceutical cargo safely, within a specific temperature range, and why ocean logistics is a key solution for pharma logistics.

With over a decade of experience in logistics and more than 80 years of experience with temperature-controlled shipments, Maersk has the expertise to make sure that goods are in temperature-controlled environment for the entire duration of the logistical process. Moreover, we ensure that there is always an expert from our team, ready to assist any of our clients, no matter where they are.

We work with our customers to understand their needs for assured quality control during the transport of temperature-controlled pharma products and we have been executing regular pharmaceutical ocean freight shipments globally. The shipments are transported via ocean freight instead of the usual air freight. Various customers have reviewed our quality approach in the logistical process supported by available data and results, before signing a Quality agreement to enable the way forward with regards to ocean freight. To enable QA sign off usually the customers wanted to run trials and ensure operational execution of their quality needs and excellent results gave the customer confidence for further collaboration.

Do we convince the customer to do Ocean freight, or do they convince us to ship pharmaceuticals?

Air freight is widely considered means of transport for pharma goods because of the proven record that the goods will reach safer and faster, with frequent checks and monitoring. However, the air freight process is also prone to lead to deviations (or changes in temperature) and costly logistics.

Therefore, we share a lot of our customers believe that reefers via ocean freight are the best way to transport pharmaceutical products and our partners rely on our global reach and the largest reefer container fleet.

Over the past years, ocean transport has taken on much greater visibility in the pharmaceuticals industry, simply because of its efficiency in terms of:

1. Reliability and Higher Quality

Although ocean freight takes much longer than air travel, it is often more reliable because there are far fewer product handoffs. According to studies on temperature excursions, the probability of occurrence in air freight is rather high compared to the 1% caused by ocean freight, thus leading to higher quality. As an asset owner we at Maersk are able to deliver operational excellence optimizing power off, allocation of space & equipment guarantees. This set the beginning to develop a strategic partnership in the years to come.

2. Efficiency

Ocean freight costs is significantly lesser than air transport. Customs clearances and other time-consuming paperwork can often be arranged during transit, thus making the process a little less tedious as well.

3. A low carbon footprint

For businesses with sustainability goals in mind, ocean freight offers significant opportunities in reducing their carbon footprint. Ocean transport has a lower carbon footprint that (it’s 1/25th of the size of air travel).

THE OUTCOME

Maersk has been successful in shipping pharma goods from origin to destination, within the optimal temperature (between 2-8C, 15-25C, -20C), by matching quality management requirements. What stands out is also that we could provide our customer visibility and peace of mind that the operations would be maintained under strict supervision, in conditions maintained to the highest standards.

The Air to Ocean conversion initiatives success has opened opportunities for our Pharmaceutical & Healthcare customers to expend work together and share best practices. The aim is to increase sustainability, by transitioning more product from air freight, to ocean freight.

Ocean freight provides opportunities for an integrated, end-to-end supply chain network that empowers stakeholders in an industry that needs greater efficiency and agility to adapt to constant change — whether that includes competition, product life cycles, inventory management, technical considerations, or disruptive forces.

Through our quest to build more efficient, more competitive, and more resilient pharma supply chains, ensures stakeholders gain the ability to access and share temperature and location data on demand while goods are in transit — across all lanes. Through real-time cloud data, businesses can proactively reduce temperature excursions, eradicate product loss, achieve regulatory quality compliance, and ensure product integrity with quick responses to corrective and preventive actions.

Find out more about Maersk Pharma Healthcare Logistics here: https://www.maersk.com/industry-sectors/pharma-healthcare-logistics