Temperature control: How packaging plays a vital role in global cold chain logistics

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As temperature-control requirements to maintain a pharma compound’s stability are constantly evolving, innovation in packaging is increasingly playing a vital role in global cold chain logistics. Paul Terry, director of sales EMEA, Peli BioThermal, tells us more…

In an ever-evolving industry various pharmaceutical compounds, used in the sector, are developed in certain temperature control conditions or designed to be stored at specific temperatures to maintain stability.

It’s critical, therefore, when shipping pharmaceutical products between locations they remain at their storage condition temperatures to maintain effectiveness at the point of use. Within the industry there are certain typical temperature ranges such as deep-frozen, frozen, refrigerated and room temperature.

For example, if products are particularly reactive they may be frozen to stop them reacting or if they’re live culture products they need to be kept warm. These temperature ranges can be narrow for some pharmaceutical products with +2 oC to +8 oC or +15 oC to +25 oC being typical requirements. Other product temperature storage ranges can be far broader, based on the stability data the pharmaceutical company has for those products or the storage conditions set on the product label.

The innovation in the cold chain packaging industry is almost running in parallel with the pharmaceutical industry. It’s not running as a consequence of the change in drugs development, however the demand is changing.

With the pharmaceutical companies developing more complex and temperature sensitive drugs, the cold chain industry is having to meet the growing market demand for supply as well as improved packaging performance and efficiency. To help mitigate the supply chain risks the industry is seeing a greater demand for higher performing packaging products.

Technologies available

There are currently different technologies available that offer the advantages of duration and temperature stability.

Traditionally, during the cold chain passive packaging industry’s embryonic development stage, the main forms of technologies deployed were ones using insulating material for the outer box of essentially polystyrene or foams, providing protection and insulation. Then to maintain the temperature inside the packaging combinations of chilled and frozen water were deployed.

Although relatively cost effective, in terms of unit price, these systems needed fine-tuning to keep products at the right temperature, over the required duration. Using these systems often results in relatively heavy shipping solutions because you’re carrying a lot of water and bulky insulation, as well as the actual payload. Performance against highly variable external temperature challenges can also be below requirements.

Advancements over recent years has seen the introduction of better insulation by using vacuum insulated panels (VIPs), reducing the thickness of the insulation required and increasing performance.

We’re also seeing an accelerated replacement of water-based systems with those using phase change materials (PCMs) where, through a combination of materials, the melting point of the coolants is designed to the ideal temperature, rather than water ice at 0 oC.

These systems provide far more stability inside the payload space to the desired temperature and by using less overall material.

These newer packaging developments are delivering significant payload benefits, as there’s less liquid in the system and the insulation is much thinner through more effective VIPs. The payload efficiency of these new systems can be more than double the traditional water based and foam insulated options, saving significant expense on logistics services.

The drawback of these systems is, while they provide excellent performance, they do tend to come at a higher unit price. However, the small, compact nature of their size means they actually pay for themselves with the lower spend on freight, more than justifying the extra unit price of the product.

This is certainly the case if you then take into account the reduced incidence of lost products due to temperatures not being maintained, which can be significant.

There’s also an increasing industry trend towards reusability, such as the Crēdo system, rather than single use packaging. As these high performing systems contain higher value components, it is economically advantageous to retain, recapture and reuse that value through a good reuse programme. Plus reuse delivers better environmental sustainability.

Suppliers to the industry are increasingly providing the support infrastructure to help the transition to re-use, such as bespoke service centres and defined quality inspection processes.

Shipping lanes

Today most of the passive temperature controlled systems are used within a courier network and/or for air cargo freight. Most passive packaging systems have durations of less than 120 hours, whilst the requirements of the customers might only be 48 hours in terms of their courier express network.

The design of the packaging used can therefore be tuned to the requirement of the duration and the temperature sensitive nature of the product being shipped.

It’s about packaging companies offering a mixed menu of packaging solutions. The key is to specify your packaging choices around the shipping lanes you have, within reason, as you don’t want to have too many packaging options because that would become unmanageable in your warehouse operations.

So how do you define those lanes? One of the things we’ve seen during recent years is temperature monitoring becoming more commonplace, due to the cost of data loggers and the capture of the data becoming more affordable and accessible.

Increasingly pharmaceutical companies now have a far better understanding of the temperature stresses their products experience during shipment in certain lanes. They can better determine what is a high-risk or low-risk lane and then make the appropriate packaging choice to fit that requirement.

One of our roles is to match the appropriate packaging system used to the client’s lanes, so they’re not spending more than necessary, but are getting an appropriate solution to protect their pharmaceutical product, for both their brand reputation and ultimately the patient receiving those products.

Our approach is centred on reducing the total cost of ownership for a client in getting their products from the point of manufacture or clinical study centre to the end patient whilst maintaining that required product temperature.

That total cost of ownership includes the cost of handling the product in their own supply chain, third parties shipping and handling, the receiving party and the unit cost of the packaging itself.

By increasing the payload efficiency of your packaging you will spend less money on shipping and ensure you’re not wasting money in the supply chain. It’s about being as efficient as possible while ensuring the quality is maintained throughout.

Single use versus reuse

Whether it is single use or reuse the options can be assessed in terms of their cost effectiveness.

If the packaging is low cost and low performance it’s highly unlikely to be cost effective to reuse it. If, however you deploy high-performing, high value and well-engineered systems, it often makes good economic sense to recover them in a reuse process but only if you can achieve a good recovery rate.

We use several modelling tools and years of expertise to help with these decisions, recommending the most efficient system for customers. We’ve developed our packaging portfolio in such a way; it will fit with most of the scenarios we come across in the industry.

Packaging for the future

Having the infrastructure we have, with the experience of our engineers and the amount of thermal chambers we have to qualify these systems makes a difference. It’s not simply a case of saying these packaging systems work; you have to prove they work time and again.

This qualification is crucial and is something the regulators, our customers and we can stand behind and makes sure the packaging systems perform as intended.

With the changing regulations, over the years, to make them more encompassing, such as the Good Distribution Practice (GDP) guidelines, this is critical.

As a result of these regulatory changes, challenges to the industry are continuously cropping up. Hence, we have seen an increased requirement of our expertise to ensure companies meet the latest regulatory requirements and ensure they’re getting the protection for their products in the market at the lowest cost.

The industry is in mid-transition with companies looking at how they can deploy more advanced VIP technology and PCM materials to improve the efficiency of the supply chain today.

In the short-term, I predict we’ll see some interesting play between various PCMs in different combinations and increasing use of vacuum technology to maximise the payload efficiencies and reduce handling and system preparation costs. The recently released Crēdo Universal system, is aimed at reducing customer costs and controls required for pre-conditioning, and offers ease-of-use and reliability for both high and low temperatures.

Over the longer period there will be an ongoing drive to look for the next generation of insulation to improve on costs or the payload efficiencies. For example, how can new insulation both protect the payload from impact but also provide better thermal resistance than today’s solutions?

Innovators should be looking at more interesting ways of creating insulation and innovative ways of using PCMs to achieve optimal performance at a lower cost.

Ultimately the drive is to continue to reduce the supply chain costs and improve performance and reliability.