World Courier connects South America

FLYING DOWN TO RIO

AIR CARGO • WORLD COURIER, WHICH SPECIALISES IN PHARMA TRANSPORT, IS EXPANDING ITS SERVICES INTO LATIN AMERICA BY PARTNERING WITH MVD FREE AIRPORT IN URUGUAY

WORLD COURIER AND MVD Free Airport, located in Montevideo, Uruguay, have formed a partnership that promises to greatly enhance pharmaceutical distribution throughout Latin America. MVD Free Airport was identified by World Courier as a key partner to provide a traceable, specialised and cost-effective entry point for Latin American distribution.

“World Courier has long identified the necessity to enhance and improve the distribution of pharmaceutical products in emerging markets,” says Marcos Lacués, branch manager of World Courier Uruguay. “[It] has been undergoing an arduous due diligence to ensure our key partners in every region are up to global World Courier standards.

“We’ve been familiarised with MVD Free Airport, its organisational culture, as well as its specific pharma experience, and together understood that our capabilities complemented each other perfectly,” Lacués continues. “After the construction of the pharma hub facilities, it became clear that the benefits presented to Uruguay and the LatAm region via a mutual collaboration would have a huge impact on our customers and the pharma sector in general.”

World Courier and MVD Free Airport have symbolised this collaborative spirit with the implementation of the first Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) designed for specific material handling, storage and shipment dispatching for Brazil-bound specialty products, ensuring that every task is performed ‘the World Courier way’.

ADOPTING TECHNOLOGY The partnership will further provide significant operational optimisations and customercentric improvements, Lacués states: “With the globalisation of the supply chain and the identification of the main commercial opportunities primarily in emerging markets, pharma organisations are facing key challenges that need to be addressed. This includes optimising longhauls, centralising distribution for leaner stock management, and standardising lastmile delivery taking into account regional and local contexts.”

Customers will have access to optimally designed transport conditions, alongside a tax-free regime that allows for the performance of packaging and latecustomisation activities. World Courier’s global expertise will provide pharma organisations with a straightforward solution to regional distribution. “This is especially the case for time- and temperature-sensitive materials and high-value products, which is where the partnership between MVD Free Airport and World Courier becomes a vital necessity for customers.” says Lacués.

The joint venture aims to deliver significant benefits for customers. By centralising stocks and postponing customisation activities, pharma organisations will be able to reduce stock-outs, enable rapid replenishments, minimise excess inventory at final destinations, and significantly reduce supply lead times. This will all be undertaken while ensuring its inbound/outbound logistics and storage and handling will be up to par with demanding pharma service level standards.

World Courier has also announced that in January 2018 it achieved Good Distribution Practice (GDP) certification across its 140 offices worldwide. DQS, a leading certification body for management systems worldwide, awarded the certification following a sixmonth long evaluation process covering transport, handling and storage processes. Those processes were tested against the EU GDP Guidelines, US Pharmacopeia and the World Health Organisation (WHO) DGP guidelines.

World Courier says it is the first logistics company to attain global GDP certification against three GDP standards. “As a company that’s committed to ensuring end-to-end product safety, we are proud to be the first specialty logistics provider to achieve this GDP-certification on such a global scale,” World Courier president Sam Herbert says. HCB www.worldcourier.com mvdfreeairport.com