Blue Dart ramping up cold chain services to fight against COVID-19

Blue Dart, an express logistics service provider and part of the Deutsche Post DHL Group (DPDHL) with its commitment to help improve the supply chain and ensure timely medical provisions is ramping up its infrastructure with its pre-existing specialised Temperature Controlled Logistics (TCL) to combat the pandemic. Blue Dart will further offer complete supply chain solution for the life sciences and clinical trials sector and reefer vehicles (cold chain) services to the vaccine sector to ensure seamless transport of shipments.

As the development of the COVID-19 vaccine leapfrogs across development phases, stringent temperature requirements i.e. up to (-) 80-degree C will be a critical factor for its transportation and warehousing at every stage. An efficient and specialised logistics network will be a prerequisite, to ensure safe and rapid delivery of billions of COVID-19 vaccine doses for mass immunisation, and other temperature sensitive pharma products on a national and global scale.

Blue Dart has successfully tailored its existing TCL solution to transport critical shipments such as vaccines, medical samples and more. The TCL teams work with three industry-specific segments: Clinical Research Organization (CRO), vaccine/testing kit manufactures and active pharma ingredient for swift and safe delivery of shipments. As per research on Blue Dart’s consumer feedback, conducted through net promoter approach methodology, Blue Dart successfully scored a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 100 percent for its TCL solutions, even higher than its other services which have an enviable NPS of 99.6 percent.

Ketan Kulkarni, CMO & Head – Business Development, Blue Dart, said, “The right partnerships are vital to secure critical medical supplies during health emergencies. We are actively working with various pharmaceutical organisations that are conducting clinical trials to produce a COVID-19 vaccine in India in their pre and post production journey. As a part of the DPDHL Group, Blue Dart has the knowhow of the internal best practices in the life sciences and healthcare logistics business and is a part of a large global logistics network which allows us to use each of our sister Business Unit’s strength in providing the best solution to our customer.”

He further added, “A number of factors such as warehousing, packaging and transportation, regional distribution competence, consistent temperature management, requirement of special equipment and availability of trained personnel to handle the temperature-sensitive vaccines will come into play once the vaccine is developed. With an agile response team overseeing the upscaling of our current capabilities, strong fleet of dedicated Boeing 757 aircrafts and robust infrastructure for our TCL solutions, we are capable and prepared to meet any immediate large-scale demand.”

Blue Dart has continuously worked with the medical equipment and pharmaceuticals sector to maintain the supply chain and deliver critical shipment and essential supplies including COVID vaccine samples, temperature-controlled movement of COVID-19 testing kits, ventilators, PPE, testing kits, reagents, enzymes, respirators, surgical masks, goggles and gloves amongst other critical material. The company’s six Boeing 757 freighters ensure the ease in ramping up operations swiftly to handle large scale shipments.