Transportation of pharmaceutical products often requires strict compliance with temperature conditions. It is usually quite easy to find the available refrigerated transport when arranging the delivery of such cargoes to the EEU countries from the near regions of Europe. However, when it comes to delivering from the distant regions of the European Union, it is always a problem to find refrigerators, especially in market growth conditions.
Real case: TELS Group of Companies received a request for urgent delivery of medical products from distant regions of France to Russia before May holidays. Prior to this, none of the carriers had offered the customer direct transportation. Requests made by TELS specialist to their contractors also did not give a positive result – there was no available transport for urgent delivery on this route.
How could the problem be solved reliably in the long term? We raised the problem!
Task: To organize reliable delivery of medical products from distant regions of France to Russia in the following conditions:
- The product requires strict compliance with temperature conditions;
- There is a steady shortage of transport capacity in this direction;
- Sometimes there can be a need for urgent delivery of goods or raw materials for production.
The idea of an alternative delivery scheme and its implementation
Lack of direct road transport from distant regions of France to the Russian Federation motivated TELS experts to develop an alternative delivery scheme.
Having studied all the conditions and possibilities, the customer was offered a delivery scheme with reloading on the territory of the EU. Specialists of TELS Group of Companies offered convincing arguments proving their ability to ensure compliance with temperature conditions at all stages of delivery, which would be documented by means of objective control.
The new delivery scheme consisted of the following stages:
Stage 1. Transportation of cargo from France to Poland to the reloading point.
The Republic of Poland was selected as a reloading point because:
a) Transportation capacity in the market from/to France-Poland and Poland-Russia is enough to to organize constant implementation of this scheme;
b) TELS Group of Companies works efficiently with warehousing enterprises in this country, which allows to organize reloading in conditions of compliance with temperature conditions.
Stage 2. Reloading to another transport in conditions of compliance with temperature conditions.
Compliance with temperature conditions during overloading is solved as follows:
- By the time the first car arrives at the reloading point, the second refrigerator is already precooled maintaining the required temperature;
- Both cars enter a closed storage room with a temperature control system – the temperature is also set in advance;
- Reloading is performed directly from one car to the other.
Freight forwarders often use the reloading scheme when two refrigerators meet rear doors and 4-5 people reload the cargo quickly from one car to the other. In case if the exterior temperature is very much different, there is a risk the temperature near the open doors can become higher/ lower than required.
Reloading in a storage room with approximate temperature conditions does not change the temperature in the refrigerators noticeably. This is controlled and confirmed by temperature sensors installed in entrance areas.
Stage 3. Delivery of goods to the Customer.
For customs clearance and release of goods for sale, it is required to document the entire temperature history from supplier’s storage period of the goods to the delivery to the destination.
During both direct delivery and implementation of alternative logistics schemes, the customer receives the goods with temperature datasheets taken from sensors confirming constant compliance with temperature conditions.
The result of the development and use of the logistics scheme
The implementation of an alternative transportation scheme created a number of new opportunities and advantages for the company/customer:
- A reliable system allowing to deliver pharmaceutical products from distant regions of France to Russia in conditions of severe shortage of transport capacity;
- Technology of constant compliance with temperature conditions tested during the implementation of the logistics scheme with reloading of goods in transit;
- Strengthened competitive advantages of the company as a reliable supplier capable of implementing a rapid supply of pharmaceutical products from Europe to the EEU market in any conditions.
Prepared by specialists of TELS Group of Companies
