There was a customer who unexpectedly needed to move a large amount of pharma product in three days. Thanks to the strength of our network and capabilities, and the dedication of our team, we were able to respond quickly and successfully deliver what was needed. That experience taught me that customers need a partner that is prepared for the expected and the unexpected and can execute flawlessly.

In this space, customer centricity is crucial. There is often not time to do a deep dive into their needs. Success depends on understanding their goals and requirements upfront so you can easily pivot on a moment’s notice. Pharma customers don’t just need a top-performing product from a cold chain partner. They need a team of people with the knowledge, experience, dedication and enthusiasm to make every shipment a success for them and the patients they serve.

There are a couple of critical factors that have a large impact on your cold chain strategy: the product and process design and the manufacturing supply chain network. First, and particularly for biologics, the decisions around formulation, stability, storage conditions, and the way the drug substance and drug product are packaged can significantly influence the cold chain strategy later. The earlier those requirements are understood, the more effectively you can design the right packaging, lanes and network plans.

Second, a manufacturing chain that spans countries as well as in-house and external sites adds more complexity to ensure alignment at the right times and places with increased coordination among all parties.

It’s not the typical answer, but I think they underestimate how much coordination and communication with their partners and the support teams matter for every shipment. The technology and basic capability to move these shipments are available from a variety of vendors but not all vendors are specialized in pharma. And these shipments require extensive coordination, risk assessment and deep knowledge at multiple points between pick-up and delivery.

It's important to ensure that your cold chain partner, whose operations may span multiple industries, understands that, while every shipment matters, there are very different consequences when you're moving a life-saving therapy versus a conventional temperature-sensitive product. Lower cost and less specialty options exist, but is the small upfront savings really worth the risk of compromising an entire shipment of life-saving medicine?

I often say that logistics is the unsung hero of pharma — they absorb all the delays that happen upstream and make it happen on the back end. Envirotainer is built for all scales of distribution and types of products, so we don’t have to make trade-offs when providing solutions. We treat every shipment like it is the most important and don’t think you should ever have to compromise on technical performance.

That being said, there are a couple of trade-offs that do inevitably happen. One being introducing new types of cold chain solutions when the current solution is “working” but isn’t ideal. There is a cost/benefit/risk around this topic because changing to a new solution can often offer better quality or lower costs, but it also requires significant internal effort and valuable resources to validate, and you must weigh that investment and risk against the potential benefit.

That becomes even more important for smaller biotech companies that may not have deep logistics expertise internally. They need to know when to build that capability themselves and when to rely on a specialized partner to help them make the right decision and implement it successfully.

Launch plans and coordination for the new modalities coming online. There are many new biologics in phase 3 and prepping for launch to fill the upcoming patent cliffs. The earlier we start coordination and risk assessment the better.

What I mentioned earlier about being prepared for the expected and unexpected — that can’t happen without in-depth planning. These products are the future of pharma and if we want them to be successful, we need to work together as early as possible to ensure flawless execution.