Budget airline SpiceJet and freight forwarder EFL have joined hands with Tower Cold Chain Solutions to use its temperature-controlled containers in a bid to boost plans of delivering COVID-19 vaccines across the country.
SpiceJet has shared that it would use the containers as part of its COVID-19 logistics operation.
SpiceJet Cargo(SpiceXpress) CEO Sanjiv Gupta said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has brought forth the fact that Indian cold-chain infrastructure for pharma products is rudimentary and will take time to evolve.
SpiceJet will provide narrow and wide-bodied aircraft to carry TOWER containers and Covid-19 vaccines across India. With over 90 aircraft, SpiceJet will handle the distribution across 63 domestic airports and 11 international airports to ensure meeting with the supply chain and distribution objectives.
“The tripartite agreement signed between SpiceXpress, [EFL] and Tower, envisages to provide the pharma companies a speedy and reliable end-to-end cold-chain logistics solution”, Mr Gupta shared.
“With Tower’s expertise in manufacturing temperature-controlled boxes, EFL’s strong global presence and SpiceXpress’ varied aircraft fleet, I firmly believe that we are all set to give the cold-chain Industry in India the much-needed impetus it has been waiting for.”
~Sanjiv Gupta, CEO, SpiceXpress
EFL Global chief executive Senthil Shanmugam added: “The containers we chose are obviously of the upmost importance for this expansion and operation as we need to know that they are not only reliable but they are robust and reusable.”
EFL is a global supply-chain and freight forwarding company that currently handles over 20 million shipments to 25 countries spanning across 60 offices worldwide.
The partnership has already tested out their cold-chain solution with containers at various temperatures to ensure that every issue is dealt with, regardless of the compliance requirements that the vaccine requirements may entail.
