PHARMA.AERO QUARTERLY UPDATE: RECAP OF THE PAST MONTHS & UPDATE ON THE GPT AND PHARMA CORRIDOR PROJECT
Recently our organization went through a restructuring, which resulted in a Board of Directors with six dedicated board members, and a full-time back-office administration person: Miss Sonja Jaspers. This restructuring was necessary to be able to match the growth of the organization.
During IATA’s World Cargo Symposium, last March in Singapore, Pharma.Aero members were actively involved in different sessions, especially in the Pharmaceutical Track. During this session, we welcomed Eddy Weygaerts from Pfizer, Nina Heinz from DHL Global Forwarding / Thermonet / LifeConEx, Ong Geok Suan from Singapore Airlines and Fedor Novikof from AirBridgeCargo. We were proud to be able to make a positive contribution to the session with 4 of our members present during the panel discussion. Here you can read an article by Air Cargo World about the panel session.
During the WCS , Pharma.Aero also welcomed 3 new members: Cairo Airport Cargo Community Cargolinx, Cathay Pacific Airlines and Edmonton International Airport (who also joined as a Strategic Member and a BOD member).
Pharma.Aero has also continued to develop their ongoing projects. The current evolution of the Global Pharma Tracker has resulted in aligning Pfizer, Singapore Airlines, Changi Airport and Brussels Airport to testcase the first data exchange within the platform.
Also within the Pharma Corridor project, a test corridor has been setup between Pfizer, Brussels Airport, Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong Airport. Currently we are evaluating the results of the first 5 test shipments passing through the lane BRU-HKG. The fact that the lane is monitored with “life” shipments is slowing down the monitoring process due to systems changes and changes of forwarder. In the coming weeks we hope to speed up the number of test shipments as now also MSD is sending goods via the BRU-HKG lane. Next to that we are investigating if we can use the data of “historical” shipments.
Furthermore, the Security Standard Protocol has been initiated and the Air Transport Benchmark Study has restarted, to move forward to finalize this project.
For the upcoming months, Pharma.Aero will work on its contribution to the program of FlyPharma, and is already in the preparation for the next General Assembly.