Interview

‘LifeConEx is localised to meet Indian conditions’

LifeConEx is a partnership between DHL Global Forwarding and Lufthansa Cargo and has forayed into Indian drug logistics industry. Arshiya Khan finds out this venture's offerings in India in conversation with Christoph Remund, the CEO-DHL Global Forwarding.

What kind of service does LifeConEx offer the pharma industry?

LifeConEx is a specialised temperature controlled transportation solution. It was created for providing services which support the life sciences industry's need to move temperature controlled products around the world. As the lifesciences sector is growing at a fast pace, LifeConEx offers a plenty of opportunities in India. Drug firms confront a complex set of challenges in managing their supply chains.

LifeConEx is a specialised service, meeting the needs of a specialised industry, localised to meet Indian conditions. As the lifesciences sector in India is booming there are tremendous opportunities for LifeConEx in India. We also saw growing need for high quality distribution for lifesciences products. Consistent growth of temperature controlled products is growing at a rate from 35 percent today to 70 percent by 2011.

How is LifeConEx different from other services?

The USP of LifeConEx lies with the fact that it virtually integrates standard handling processes within and out of the airport environment in the airfreight industry. LifeConEx is present in 27 countries and will cover 50 countries by 2007. It is the first and only initiative in the logistics and transportation industry in India that provides a dedicated approach specifically developed to meet the needs of the pharmaceutical and lifesciences industry.

LifeConEx's lifescience service center offers a 24/7 end-to-end monitoring of the entire physical, informational, and regulatory process for global lifescience shipments. It also improves the order to minimise the risks for temperature deviations at international and process hand-over points, and reduces the total supply chain cost. LifeConEx is a service dedicated to the unique temperature needs of the lifesciences industry. It removes temperature deviations and physical damage to the consignment that could cause harm to critical products. All in one hand, and that I think is really unique.

What are the standards that are in place to maintain the quality of pharma products?

Pharma products being very sensitive, extra care is required to handle the products so DHL has a 52 full time dedicated quality control team which ensures that all drugs are compliant to patent laws. It follows FDA standards, Six Sigma processes and takes all necessary steps to comply with all important quality control measures. Due to stringent procedures in countries like Brazil and Italy, every freight forwarder needs to have documented proof to ship drugs across the world. DHL validates and complies with all Temperature Controlled Processes (TPA).

LifeConEx is compliant with GDP (Good Distribution Practice) and GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice). In a highly regulated marketplace, our innovative healthcare solutions support manufacturers in the pharmaceutical, medical device and hospital supplies industries, in multi-temperature environments across the world.

What are the other services that you offer which differentiates you from competitors?

In a service industry, superior quality comes from having a world-class infrastructure supporting exceptional people. In order to provide customers with a higher overall degree of transparency and control throughout transactions, DHL Global Forwarding offers a range of unique value adding services linked primarily to international transportation in the form of Customer Program Management (CPM). Together with experts from DHL, it also has specialists from IBM, Intel, Philips and SAP research innovations covering the entire logistics chain. Developments focus on RFID technology, geodata technology for optimising travel routes and networks, as well as logistics related GPS (Global Positioning System) applications. Our clinical trials logistics offer customers high visibility and assurance that supplies are fully controlled from receipt to final delivery.

Information Technology is at the heart of a logistics business. It will be impossible to fulfil the full potential of our business unless we are actually able to harness the capabilities of IT fully, to the benefit of both our customers and ourselves. So IT is absolutely at the center of our business. We are able to offer our customers a very broad range of services, right along the supply chain, requiring not only a lot of operational capability, but also significant IT capability.

What are your future plans for India and Indian pharma and biotech?

India has tremendous potential in the lifesciences industry and LifeConEx will provide complete temperature controlled solution to ensure that drugs and vaccines are transported in the best possible manner to minimise wastage. The lifesciences industry is growing at 38-40 percent in India and we expect the growth to double in the next fiscal year.