Kuehne+Nagel has opened a new control tower and conditioning facility in Singapore, together with subsidiary QuickSTAT, which specialises in time-critical and temperature-sensitive shipping to help bring new drugs and medical protocols to market safely and quickly.
The investment is a part of a wider strategy to further expand both companies’ logistics capabilities to serve customers in the pharma and healthcare industry across Asia Pacific.
The new conditioning facility, located at Kuehne+Nagel’s Singapore logistics hub, caters to a full suite of services during the pharmaceutical product lifecycle.
It includes a controlled-ambient warehouse and in-transit storage for vaccines, investigational drugs, patient clinical specimen and active pharmaceutical ingredients. It also provides management of cell and gene therapies, where QuickSTAT specialists can ensure proper handling, packaging and storage of time- and temperature-sensitive products.
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In announcing its first half earnings results, Kuehne+Nagel said that its pharma segment was critical in the company more than doubling its earnings for the period. Along with e-commerce, high demand for pharma solutions resulted to growth for its air logistics and contract logistics units.
Air logistics recorded significant volume growth in the first half of the year thanks to solutions like combined sea and air freight, which allowed the business unit to record strong market share gains. Air freight volumes were up 44 percent over the same period last year at 988,000 tonnes.
Jack Liu, senior vice president for air logistics at Kuehne+Nagel Asia Pacific said the partnership with QuickSTAT will add value to the company’s pharma and healthcare customers in Asia Pacific.
“With the ISO-certified and GxP compliant facility that upholds the best practices for storage, conditioning, transportation, routings and logistics—I am confident that we will consistently deliver product integrity and patient safety,” he added.
