While the COVID-19 vaccine was warmly welcomed, it brought with it even more complex logistical requirements, the most crucial of which was the need for a reliable cold supply chain. Coupled with the sheer size of the operations and a sense of urgency, the fulfillment of these much-needed vaccines turned into a colossal task to manage.
For example, in September 2020, DHL estimated that to reach global coverage over the next two years, nearly 200,000 pallet shipments and 15,000 flights were required. In addition, the final distribution required almost 15 million cooling boxes along with the corresponding amounts of dry ice or cooling bricks.
Government initiatives can significantly impact the pharmaceuticals industry by facilitating the implementation of cold chain monitoring solutions throughout the value chain.
Accordingly, biopharmaceutical third-party logistics companies can minimise supply disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been globally classified into essential services. This helps them to operate and sustain revenue growth. Both government initiatives and rising demand for local logistics are expected to strengthen the market growth over the coming years.
The pharmaceutical market is fast-growing and dominated by Europe and North America due to their high global market share and a high number of imports and exports of pharmaceutical products. They are also leading the implementation of advanced warehousing and transportation technologies in the supply chain. If we look at the UAE’s supply chain industry overall, it is ranked first in terms of being a logistics-friendly country––in the region. Additionally, the pharmaceutical sector in the MENA region has witnessed tremendous growth over the last few years and is forecasted to reach around USD 60 billion by 2025. Particularly for the COVID-19 vaccine supply, UAE has done an incredible job of managing the crisis and supporting other countries during this time.
Dr Shereen Nassar, global director of Logistics Studies and the director of the MSc Logistics and Supply Chain Management Programme – Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University Dubai, believes the UAE’s logistics industry has demonstrated that swift action is needed by fleet and transport to ensure the efficient management of the bio-pharmaceutical cold supply chain management during the pandemic: “Even in the toughest of situations, the UAE has rolled up its sleeves and swung into action. One of the major requirements of a pharmaceutical cold supply chain is the massive requirement for an equipped fleet to support the transport of required goods. In May, AD Ports acquired 11 specialised refrigerated vehicles to improve the efficiency of the UAE’s Covid-19 vaccine supply chain.
“The vehicles are expected to enhance vaccine distribution and supply to over 1.1 million doses a day. The fleet is entirely designed to serve the purpose and has been fitted with cooling equipment to support the handling of vaccines at temperatures between 2°C to 8°C. As the demand increases across the world, there is an urgent need to reinvent methods and make quick decisions that will support the global need for vaccines and enhance the logistical limitations for other products in the biopharmaceutical sector.”
According Dr Nassar, the market has also seen an enhancement to cargo flight operations as well as storage overhauls.
“Emirates SkyCargo and Etihad Cargo, part of two of the biggest airlines in the UAE, ramped up their cargo fleet offering and enhanced their cold chain facilities,” she says.
“Etihad strengthened its ability to transport COVID-19 vaccines worldwide by expanding its dry ice carrying capabilities across its Boeing Dreamliner and Boeing 777 fleet.
“Etihad’s fleet can now carry up to five times more dry ice per flight, enabling it to provide additional frozen and deep-frozen conditions required for different vaccines. On the other hand, Emirates SkyCargo recently announced that it has enhanced its temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical and vaccine handling capacities by extending its fully automated cool room with 94 airline pallet positions at its dedicated pharmaceutical facility at Dubai International Airport. The expanded cool room will provide an additional 2,600sqm of the temperature-controlled environment (2-25o C) to store and handle vaccines and other pharmaceutical products. Additionally, in May, Emirates announced that it will offer cargo capacity free of charge to NGOs and ship relief items on all its flights from Dubai to nine cities in India, as the country is going through major setbacks in its fight against COVID-19.”
During the early stages of the pandemic, the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH), Abu Dhabi Ports, Etihad, and other partners formed the HOPE Consortium in the UAE. The DoH Abu Dhabi identified the extensive challenges in delivering COVID-19 vaccines globally and worked with industry key players to provide comprehensive pharmaceutical end-to-end cold and ultra-cold supply solution – supporting the journey from production to patient.
The PPP (public-private partnershop) offers a complete supply chain solution involving transport, cold storage, handling, sourcing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines not only in the UAE but across the world, says Dr Nassar.
“While the government and industry players joined hands to address one of the biggest challenges of this decade, they worked closely with global last-mile delivery providers to expand the distribution range of the vaccine,” she says. “In fact according to recent reports, the HOPE Consortium has handled over 27 million COVID-19 vaccine vials across 31 different countries around the world. These partnerships have proved beneficial in supporting countries far and wide that lacked the infrastructure or the reach to procure vaccines.”
The UAE’s logistics industry has been resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring uninterrupted supply chain operations to combat any shortages of essential goods and medicine unlike countries in other regions. The resilience is due to the major investment in multimodal facilities and infrastructure over time, which proved key in managing the COVID-19 crisis from a logistics perspective. According to the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority, the Dh220bn UAE logistics sector, which is expected to contribute 8% to the UAE economy by 2021, has largely benefitted from the country’s free zones and massive infrastructure investments.
From UAE’s HOPE Consortium to Etihad’s flight overhauls to accommodate larger vaccine consignments and Emirates’ increased facility offerings, the UAE understood the urgency of the situation and supported global needs. The UAE has always been a pioneer in actioning activities that make a difference to its population and to the world. UAE’s dealing of the vaccine distribution situation is indeed a massive learning for other countries. At this juncture, it is also important to note that the country’s strategic location between Asia and the western countries also emphasises the country’s position as a key hub for connectivity and logistics.
Some key takeaways from the UAE’s logistics sector during the pandemic are that the country keeps reinventing itself at every point – the government is constantly monitoring situations to enhance the industry, says Dr Nassar.
“Another one being, the coming together of various entities to reach one end goal of serving humanity. The partnership of public and private organisations resulted in an extremely effective way to transport the vaccine across the globe. The UAE has indeed shown the rest of the world its strength as a global logistics hub and the COVID-19 pandemic only further solidified the importance of its reach across the world. While the pandemic wreaked havoc on many industries, the logistics sector has kept going and continues to support global needs and demands.”
