The airfreight station in Leipzig of DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight specialist within the Deutsche Post DHL Group, has been granted Center of Excellence for Independent Validators in Pharmaceutical Logistics (CEIV) certification by IATA.
IATA’s CEIV Pharma certification “attests the highest service and quality standards for life sciences and healthcare customers through uniform processes and a compliant network”, DHL noted.
IATA assesses a pharma facility’s adherence to its own Temperature Control Regulations (TCR), the EU’s GDP (Good Distribution Practice) guidelines, Annex 5 of the World Health Organization and the United States Pharmacopeia Standards as required for CEIV Pharma certification.
“For years the number of regulations and requirements has been increasing in the life sciences and healthcare industry, also with regards to transportation and storage,” says Thilo Specht, vice president airfreight Germany for DHL Global Forwarding.
“We at DHL place great emphasis on improving our service quality and demonstrate through IATA CEIV Pharma certification that we are the right partner for transporting vital and temperature sensitive products.”
DHL began the process required to certify its global stations according to IATA CEIV Pharma standard in the third quarter of last year.
Following independent audits by third parties and relevant training courses for employees on-site, the DHL Air Thermonet station in Leipzig has now received the quality standard.
The Leipzig station covers 2,760 sq m, of which 232 sq m is available for goods held at temperatures ranging from 2 to 8 degrees Celsius, while 265 sq m of the facility is kept at between 15 and 25 degrees Celsius.
“Over many years, DHL has been actively involved with IATA’s continuous efforts to adequately answer to the regulatory demands of the pharmaceutical industry,” said David Bang, global head of DHL Temperature Management Solutions and chief executive LifeConEx at DHL Global Forwarding.
“This standardised approach in the air freight industry means productivity, accuracy, and reliability. All of those lead to product integrity and patient safety,” he added.
Each of DHL’s Air Thermonet locations are said to provide a “wide-ranging product portfolio, covering all client needs for time and temperature sensitive airfreight shipments”.
Furthermore, thanks to its cloud-based IT platform LifeTrack, DHL believes that it offers significantly more transparency in comparison to conventional offers in the area of temperature-controlled transport.
“LifeTrack not only ensures shipment tracking but also enables the intervention during the supply process around the clock on 365 days a year,” DHL asserts.
