One company is using his experience with Tuna as a guide.
Thermo King – who revolutionized food transport through advances in temperature-controlled shipping before World War II – is working with hospital companies, governments and logistics companies to ensure that vaccines are kept safe when they travel to clinics and hospitals. To make this happen, they have rebuilt commonly used containers to transport fresh tuna to Japan, which requires similar cooling conditions.
“We’ve taken that product and we’ve improved it,” said Francisco Incalza, president of Thermo King Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Incalza said the development of such innovations usually takes years.
Calling all freezers
Pharmaceutical products usually need to be kept cold at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius or about 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit during transport. But Pfizer’s vaccine is different.
Supply chain specialists Let’s say that keeping mRNA vaccines cold enough is the key to ending vaccine distribution and epidemics worldwide. But they think it’s possible, given the sophistication of the so-called “cold chain”, which has filled food and medicine around the world for decades at some temperature.
“It needs to be very carefully planned and implemented,” said Burak Kazaz, a professor of supply chain management at Syracuse University. “Saying that can’t happen, but we have to be very careful about it.”
Technology does not come cheap. London’s Imperial College Ledge registers that most of the cost of vaccination programs comes from cold chain requirements, which can account for up to 80% of the total cost.
“There is a framework for moving sensitive, temperature-controlled goods around the world,” said Tom Jackson, author of the book Shield: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again.
“If we get the temperature right, we can take anything anywhere and store as long as we want.”
Thanks to Frederick McKinley Jones and Joseph Numero, founders of Thermo Key, according to J. Jackson. In his book, he writes that Jones developed a more efficient refrigerated unit that could be taken by truck after a golf buddy complained to his business partner Numero about a shipment damaged during a voyage in 1938.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the company grew “rapidly” during World War II, when its technol blood g was used to help preserve blood, medicine and food.
In 1991, President George HW Bush awarded the two men posthumous national medals. Jones was the first black person to receive this honor.
From tuna to vaccines
The next generation has a role to play in meeting Thermo King’s second crisis.
In October, David Regneri, president of Train Technologies, told analysts that the company has developed mobile freezers with a capacity of 60 times the previous capacity in the market for pharmaceuticals. He was referring to the retrofitted tuna unit.
The new product, which was developed in consultation with drug manufacturers, was “a great opportunity for Thermo King,” he said.
Train Technologies, which also sells heating and cooling systems for buildings and homes, will provide an update to investors on Monday. Shares trading in New York have risen 35% this year.
Expecting an increase in demand, Thermo King began production of its new units at a facility in China a few months ago, according to Incalza. He sees the initial distribution of shots later this year as part of a crucial trial leading up to a massive distribution order in 2021.
“When it comes to spring, we’re talking about delivering billions and billions of doses,” he said.
Given the emergence of gene therapy and other biopharmaceuticals, Incalza noted that the new units could be useful in addition to epidemiological epidemics. That, too, will require movement and storage at very cold temperatures.
This ultra-low temperature will require more and more products to be transported, so it is opening up a new market for this type of equipment, he said.
There are big challenges, though – including how to deliver vaccines to less developed regions, which lack the same degree of refrigeration infrastructure. In places like this, Incalza said, he hopes to arrange small “cold cubes” for the Thermo King Modern vaccine and other candidates that can reach -30 degrees Celsius or -22 degrees Fahrenheit, as they will be easier to carry to the finals. Distance.
While the distribution of the vaccine will be a difficult task, Michael Berg, CEO of Enviroteiner, a Swedish company specializing in temperature-controlled air transport of pharmaceuticals, thinks the cold chain industry is on it.
“It simply came to our notice then [and] “Everyone will need to bump up their fleet capacity,” Berg said, “but this is all happening now.”
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