The 3rd annual Cold Chain Summit organized by IQPC was held on May 22-23 at Hyderabad Convention Centre. The two day conference was attended by about 90 participants across 35 companies. The sponsors for the event were IAG Cargo, Weather Shield, Dyzle, Pluss and Dupont. The event included networking sessions, panel discussions, round table discussion and presentations. The networking sessions and round table discussions were conducted innovatively; they ensured that by the end of the two days, each participant would have got the opportunity to interact and network with one another. This was facilitated by the small but focused number of participants. 

The main topics of discussion during the two days were:

On the first day, Alan Dorling (Global Head – Pharmaceuticals & Life Sciences, IAG Cargo) spoke on ‘Challenges in air freighting time and temperature sensitive shipments across a global network’, emphasizing IAG Cargo’s initiative in aligning their offerings specifically to the pharma segment for temperature controlled air-freight. Hemanth DP (Chief Operating Officer – Hub Development, Logistics & Free Trade Zone, GMR Hyderabad International Airport) gave an insight on the operations of GMR airport, which has India’s only dedicated temperature controlled storage and airport handling facility. Dr. Srinivas Cherukupalli (Senior Research Scientist – Tyvek®, E.I. DuPont India Pvt. Ltd.) spoke about their new product Tyvek, which has UV resistant properties that can prove to be an effective thermal blanket for pallets to maintain a temperature gradient of at least 10°C. P. V. Raju (Vice President – Supply Chain, Biological E. Ltd.) made a presentation on ‘Choosing the right packaging solution to reduce cost, increase efficiency and ensure quality for vaccines requiring temperature maintenance between 2°C - 8°C’. The presentation gave some useful insights on the amount of wastage and loss of product efficacy of medicines due to thermal breaks. Samit Jain (Managing Director, Pluss Polymers) spoke about indigenous phase change material technology for the three temperature zones critical to pharma products. The presentation highlighted the performance of PCM versus the challenges of existing non-compliant solutions for the three requirements, i.e. 2°C to 8°C, +15°C to +25°C and -18°C to -28°C.