Overcoming barriers to active cold-chain adoption

Cihan Likogullari, head of sales EMEA at Envirotainer, explains why there are still barriers to the adoption of active cold-chain containers – and how they can be overcome.

Active solutions for temperature-controlled, pharmaceutical air cargo can reduce the risks associated with moving fragile treatments around the globe. Yet barriers to their adoption remain. It should be a simple decision to begin using them, so why does reticence exist?

What is an active container?

Before we explore the barriers in detail, it’s worth considering what an active container is, compared to a passive one. It all begins with the need to transport heat-sensitive pharmaceuticals and biomedicines over long distances at a constant temperature.

Doing so requires packaging that prevents warming or cooling. Commonly, this is achieved with passive solutions – called so because they don’t have moving parts or anything that proactively works to maintain the temperature. Imagine a giant picnic box with insulation and cool packs, often using dry ice or sometimes frozen water. They’ve served the industry well for decades, where suitable.

Active solutions are different. Imagine a giant battery powered fridge that can have pallets of pharmaceuticals loaded into it. Fully charged, it can maintain a constant internal temperature for up to a week (170 hours in some cases). They’re purpose built to be loaded as freight and travel round the world in a circular economy like a high-tech shipping container designed specifically for air transport.

These different characteristics mean one thing is guaranteed about passive solutions: they’ll eventually warm up. They’re designed to last for a finite period and once that’s passed, most of the pack needs to be thrown away. If it’s not reached its destination by that point, the shipment is lost.

With this in mind, the case for active solutions is clear in a world that has never been more complex and uncertain. They’re low risk and easy to monitor. They’re easy-to-use and load, needing as little as eight hours to charge compared to potentially five days preparation for a passive container.

What’s more, over the lifetime of their use, active containers are environmentally superior. In fact, greenhouse gas emissions associated with active solutions are more than 90% lower than passive. They’re also up to 35 per cent more space efficient and when all factors are considered, an active solution is more cost efficient when the Total Landed Cost (TLC) is taken into account.

What stands in the way of adoption?

There are a number of reasons why some parts of the industry aren’t adopting active solutions. Most are perceived rather than real. The first is a simple one: inertia. The phrase, “we’ve always done it this way,” comes to mind.

Passive solutions are long-established. They’ve been used from the early 1960s when global vaccine programmes began. The first container with active temperature control (dry ice) arrived on the market in 1995, yet 26 years later inertia and lack of awareness is a challenge.

In fact, according to research into improvement in cold-chain solutions at a country level, lack of awareness is among the most significant barriers to adoption of new technology. It’s therefore vital that manufacturers and users of active solutions are loud advocates for them. It’s not self-serving, it’s simply a matter of improving the whole sector.

Perhaps stemming from inertia and a comfort with using passive solutions, the second barrier is a willingness to accept a certain level of risk. While forwarders know the clock starts ticking towards failure the minute a shipment is packed in a passive container, they bet on the consignment getting to its destination on time.

This can lead to losses. This simply isn’t acceptable today. Life-saving treatments cannot be wasted. Everyone in the cold-chain needs to reconsider the acceptable margin of risk when the challenges and potential damage are so high.

The third barrier is perceived cost. People look at the up-front price of an active container and think it’s too much. However, when all payments are considered through TLC, active solutions are often less expensive and offer better value. But perceptions are hard to shift. As a result, TLC needs to be universally adopted to calculate the true value of active solutions.

The final and most complicated barrier is that many forwarders have built their cold-chains around passive solutions. While they understand that the most important factor is quality of service for their customers, they may tend to opt for passive simply because it’s readily available and profitable. It builds a higher volume, hence generating more revenue.

While forwarders are investing in active solutions – and must always be ready to offer an active solution if their pharmaceutical company clients demand it – they need to do so more quickly and build new business models that support their use. If they don’t, competitors may take their business by offering greater performance at a lower cost.

The tide of history is turning

It’s clear that while barriers to adoption remain, they’re beginning to crumble. Passive solutions will always have a place, but are an environmental disaster, cost more and have higher risks associated with them.

For all these reasons, now is the time to act. There is no longer a choice for the industry. Each player in the eco-system must consider the pressures they face and decide when to make the switch from passive to active. If not, they’ll increasingly find themselves left behind in a world that’s moved on.