Shipping lines need to build confidence in sea transport to win the pharmaceutical industry

Speaking at the Contoring Covid-19 conference, co-organized by Container News and Cool Logistics, Michael Culme-Seymour - Consultant - World Economic Forum (WEF) and APAC CEO - Roambee - believe that Covax and UNICEF are releasing millions of doses of vaccines, and while they are doing well they are still only delivering 0.5-3% of the population of many countries.

That means that for many parts of the world, such as Asia, shipping has a chance and with 65% of the world's vaccines being produced in India, shipping only takes the next 10 days. Southeast Asia, very likely to use an ocean supply chain, the technology there, the equipment available, some ports have been accelerated while others will need to be looked if there is to be an integrated system of delivery..

According to Culme-Seymour, carriers have to "persuade the pharmaceutical companies to shift over". As long as there is money available to ship by air, the vaccine will be shipped by air, but the goal of the vaccine role is to reduce the cost to 1 USD, from 3-5 USD per dose, so if the extra shipping costs the price increases significantly.

He said it is important to develop single routes, for example from India to Singapore, where the proper port organization and logistics services are located, so that shipping can demonstrate that the supply chain can work, then "people will start to gain confidence".

"Of course what we see in the public eye is the Suez Canal [the Ever Given grounding] the delays in Los Angeles where you wait eight weeks to get your container offloaded causes lack of confidence," Culme -Seymour noted.

It's hard to hear that for Hristo Petkov, AP Moller-Maersk's global head of pharmaceuticals, who admits, “Global on-time delivery and performance right now it’s not great and it’s nothing that we’re proud of as a company”. However, Petkov believes that within the next two to three years the company will be able to meet the challenges in the future.

In addition, Petkov said that Maersk must give priority to vaccine distribution because there is a humanitarian aspect that needs to be addressed. The Danish carrier also determined that the vaccine delivery would be done using expensive reefer containers that would go inland and be tied up for long periods as a result.

However, Petkov also emphasized the need of partnerships with industry stakeholders for the efficient operation of the ocean supply chain.

Phaata (Adapted from ContainerNews)