Improving Supply-Chain Efficiency for Ocean Logistics

Although air shipping is still preferred for most pharmaceuticals, ocean transport is gaining favor as a way to reduce the cost of shipping pharmaceuticals long distance. Improved communications, product tracking, and condition monitoring technology are helping ensure that pharmaceutical quality remains intact during the voyage.

With an aim to improve collaboration and integration between pharmaceutical manufacturers and their logistics providers, Pharma Team Up launched Poseidon, a program that focuses exclusively on ocean shipping, on January 10, 2018.

Poseidon is designed to improve communication and the transfer of information between pharma companies and logistics firms to improve supply-chain functionality. Technical details on the program have not yet been released.

"Poseidon has been conceived to address long-standing quality, safety and service issues associated with the long-haul transportation of pharmaceutical products,” said Alan Kennedy, founder and executive director at Team Up, in a press release. “The Poseidon model provides a structured platform on which the industry can work in concert to disrupt itself before it is abruptly and adversely disrupted by uncontrollable external forces.”

According to the release, supplier companies involved with the program include Maersk, H. Essers, Marsh, DuPont, Pelican Biothermal, Logtag Recorders, and Controlant.

"The Poseidon program has been conceived as a risk-managed, fully GDP compliant, comprehensively-insured freight platform for pharma. Its consolidation of all the different freight players and elements makes it a very attractive proposition for pharma shippers," said Mark Edwards, Poseidon project team member and managing director of Modalis, a logistics consultant company, in the press release.

The program will be introduced to the market at the IQPC Temperature Controlled Logistics conference in London on February 1, 2018.

Source: Pharma Team Up