No longer a flight of fancy

Earlier this year Kuehne + Nagel, together with KLM Cargo, became the first logistics provider to successfully read and transmit temperature data for a pharmaceutical airfreight shipment throughout transportation. A consigment of cholera vaccines from Swedish manufacturer SBL Vaccines to a major pharmaceutical company in Canada, which needed to be kept within a range of two to eight degrees celsius, served as a test shipment.

Kuehne + Nagel equipped two airfreight cool containers with special temperature recording devices. Even after closing and sealing the containers the logged data could be retrieved and transmitted to an internet platform by means of a laptop running special software. At around ten checkpoints the shipment's status was checked and logged data was retrieved from the temperature recorders and evaluated. All parties involved in the project were able to monitor the continuous temperature curve via the internet. In the event of any deviation it is thus possible to proactively take corrective measures.

The transport of pharmaceutical goods places high demands on a logistics provider, with product-specific climatic conditions required throughout the process chain. In the past, the en-route retrieval and online display of data from a temperature recording device stored inside an airfreight cool container was not possible. This ability to seamlessly monitor a consignment's en-route temperature online is a novelty in the logistics industry and marks a significant step in the development of innovative Cargo 2000-based cold chain solutions.

Marcel Fujike, vice president, product management airfreight, Kuehne + Nagel, said: 'This know-how will enable us to provide companies in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry with considerable added value as regards transport reliability and product quality.'