What Is ‘Cold Chain’?

The term “cold chain” or “temperature controlled” shipping describes the full procedure for safeguarding, keeping, and moving prescription drugs within a predetermined temperature range. The procedure makes use of cooling systems to guarantee that humidity and product integrity are maintained at all times, along with temperature constraints. Cold chain procedures in the pharmaceutical industry follow Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), a set of guidelines that are upheld by regulatory agencies. This implies that they cannot permit any adverse effects on the efficacy, safety, or quality of medications.

Cold chain offers businesses in the pharmaceutical industry significant advantages. Nowadays, many more biological products can be transported to any location in the world, including vaccines. The majority of these are temperature-sensitive and still in the early phases of development. These could lose their effectiveness or potentially endanger patients if they are compromised during shipment, as has happened on multiple occasions in the past.

Over the past few years, the cold chain business has experienced remarkable growth. This is closely related to changes in the pharmaceutical industry. The industry values pharmaceuticals that need to be transported and stored chilled at a cost of about $295 billion. The worldwide cold chain market expanded at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.2% from $270.55 billion in 2022 to $295.42 billion in 2023.

Integrity in Packaging and Shipping

Pharmaceutical businesses are moving to Pelican BioThermal for reusable and single-use temperature-controlled packaging, along with other organizations hoping to achieve major cost and quality benefits in their cold chains.

The new technology safeguards both the environment and your cargo with a passive, reusable temperature-controlled shipper. lowering your carbon footprint and expenses while maintaining the ideal temperature for your most important medical supplies for up to five days. This new technology is called Credo Cube and it offers a variety of sizes, from 3 to 96 liters, and temperature options, such as controlled ambient temperature, chilled, and deep frozen. These robust, portable temperature-controlled packing systems are perfect for lowering transportation costs or in case of unforeseen delays.  High performance phase change material (PCM) for the coolant and vacuum insulated panels (VIPs) for the best insulation are used in their construction.