Lufthansa Cargo & Swiss WorldCargo, United Cargo, and Emirates SkyCargo have received this year’s Carrier Award for Reliability and Excellence. Inaugurated in 2016, the DHL CARE awards recognize air carriers whose services set the standard for the transport of temperature-sensitive biological products. The DHL CARE awards were presented during the 17th DHL Global Life Sciences and Healthcare conference, where nearly 400 leaders in life sciences and healthcare met to discuss major supply chain trends affecting the industry.
– Today’s consumers demand much faster and more flexible delivery of medicines, medical devices, and other biomedical products than ever before – said Scott Allison, President of Life Sciences & Healthcare at DHL. – The online pharmaceutical market is set to grow to $128 billion by 2023, which is why air carriers have a duty to provide temperature-controlled services in the shortest possible time, with delivery quality and real-time visibility needed to meet such great demand. The DHL CARE awards set the standards by which DHL can select carriers best suited to the increasingly stringent customer requirements for healthcare deliveries worldwide, while maintaining the integrity, accuracy, and compliance of shipments.
This year’s DHL CARE award winners were selected from among carriers based on criteria such as: delivery quality, ground handling competence, and both technological and process innovations. All winners demonstrated an extremely high level of delivery performance, combined with many other factors, including rigorous certification and bold infrastructure investments.
– Since last year, when the DHL CARE awards were first presented, we have noticed a significant trend among carriers to achieve higher levels of certification, innovative agreements with packaging partners and data monitoring, as well as dedicated infrastructure for pharmaceutical products – said David Bang, Global Head of DHL Temperature Management Solutions and CEO of LifeConEx at DHL Global Forwarding. – Over the past 12 months, DHL’s temperature-controlled Thermonet service has grown to 100 stations certified to Good Distribution Practices standards, 30 of which have also received IATA CEIV Pharma certification. We continue to invest in new technologies within the LifeTrack ecosystem, such as Big Data Analytics, IoT, and the Risk Intelligence Engine, to ensure active monitoring and intervention for time- and temperature-sensitive medical products. Our work with the best air carriers is a guarantee that hospitals, distributors, and patients receive products they can trust with their lives, and these awards highlight the logistics industry’s ongoing efforts to raise the bar in this literally life-saving industry.