Podcast #11 | Regional Characteristics in the Healthcare Logistics – India & Brazil

🎧 Tune in for our latest podcast episode to explore the regional characteristics of the life science and pharmaceutical market, and the need for cross-industry collaboration between different stakeholders, organizations and economic regions. 

Join Frank Van Gelder and his guests

• Hugo Repolho – Head of Commercial and Strategy Air Cargo at Guarulhos Airport in Brazil
• Tushar Jani – Group Chairman of Cargo Service Centre India 
• Glyn Hughes – Director General, TIACA

Tushar Jani, CSC India: “Our biggest challenge is growth. India is the global pharmacy to the world when it comes to generic drugs. If it is 20% market share of global generic drugs for India, it will go to 40% very soon.”

Hugo Repolho: “In Brazil, we are totally reliant on the international market: we import 95% of our active principles and we do manufacture the last mile.”
“In Brazil, we see some curious events which we don’t see, for instance, in Europe or the United States. The products stay in airports for way too long. For the pharma segment, they stay around 14 days at the airport, on average. For two reasons. For regulatory control, and also because the industry sees the airport as an infrastructure provider that they won’t have in the last mile, so they postpone the collection of cargo. All this creates a different approach. The shippers are not totally aware of how the cargo is processed in Brazil, and in South America in general.”

Glyn Hughes: “Growth brings with it additional challenges, and infrastructure is probably the clearest. We’ve heard in two particular regions, but in other regions, it’s the middle-mile aspect. For example, in Africa, a significant number of airports have far too, I would say, inferior infrastructure to manage these at the airport. You need it to be moved through the airport because you can’t keep it in the airport. And the distribution chain, if it slows down, the product spoils. So, that is one very significant challenge that we’re actually seeing around the world.”

Sustainability

Hugo Repolho: “Life science air cargo does not mean the freighters, but the belly cargo of passengers planes. People are travelling more and more, so the capacity is there, whether we use it or not.”

Glyn Hughes: “As an industry, we really have to put together the value proposition of air cargo, and that is to transport pharmaceuticals fast, in the highest quality possible, and in the safest conditions so that ultimately the patient can receive what the actual manufacturer produced: high-quality life-saving drugs.”

Tushar Jani: “I would say that we are already doing part of it by giving visibility, traceability and collaboration. So, by providing the insights of all the players in this chain to the details of the operation of each segment, we are already providing some answers and allowing looking for more adjusted solutions.”