$5M fridge keeps airline cargo cold

The Philadelphia region and New Jersey are home to many pharmaceutical and life-sciences companies that send and receive finished medicines and raw drug ingredients around the globe.

American Airlines officials snipped a ribbon and provided tours Tuesday at Philadelphia International Airport of a new $5 million cargo refrigeration facility catering to the cold storage needs of these companies.

The 25,000-square-foot renovated warehouse opened six weeks ago, and can handle nearly four times the amount of perishable, time-sensitive, and valuable airfreight - including vaccines, blood products, gene therapies, tissues, insulin and immunotherapies - that travel in the belly of planes on American and merger partner US Airways passenger flights. American operates an international hub with 460 daily flights in Philadelphia.

"There is a lot of research and development, as well as manufacturing, in this part of the country," said Tom Grubb, American's manager of cold chain cargo. "This was a perfect place for this facility, because it is a centralized location."

Medications manufactured in Europe and headed to South America come through Philadelphia, where they are kept temporarily in cold storage, and transferred on other aircraft to Miami, and onward to South America.

American's cargo customers include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Pfizer, Merck, Astra Zeneca, Novartis, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Ivax, American said. The drugmakers work with freight forwarders to manage their cold-storage logistics serving markets around the world.

American officials gathered for the official opening in Building C-7 in Cargo City, off I-95. The plant, next door to FedEx Corp. at the airport, fronts a public road, and backs onto the airport airfield.

"It's the only temperature-controlled facility of its kind in the Northeast corridor," Grubb said.

Products are kept at three temperature ranges: 15 degrees to 25 degrees Celsius (59 to 77 Fahrenheit); 2 degrees to 8 degrees Celsius (36 to 46 Fahrenheit), and "deep frozen" which is zero degrees to minus 20 degrees Celsius (from 32 down to minus 4).

American has an additional 3,600 square feet of cold storage in a separate buildingacross the streetthat will continue to handle perishable cargo, such as fish, flowers, and fresh vegetables and fruit.

"It's kind of a dance. As product comes in, it leaves as the next products come in," Grubb said. "It's a constant flow." Products are put on the next flight, or are picked up fordrug company customers.

Teva, based in Israel, is the world's largest manufacturer of generic pharmaceuticals. Teva's Americas headquarters is in North Wales, Montgomery County.

US Airways' daily flight from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Philadelphia often carries pharmaceuticals.

"Teva welcomes the availability of refrigerated facilities at the Philadelphia airport," said Mike Lally, senior director of North American Logistics. "This new facility provides users with increased convenience and ease of use for any products that require temperature control during the shipping process."

Some pharmaceuticals travel in thermostat-controlled containers, while others are shipped in insulated boxes on pallets, with cold packs or dry ice.

"We have seen a lot of business come our way already, in anticipation of this," Jim Butler, president of American Airlines cargo,said.

In the next three years, the "logistics side" of the pharmaceutical industry is expected to grow by 25 percent, he said. "The end user is ultimately the patient."

Pharmaceutical and health-care companies want both on-time performance and a guarantee that their products will be handled throughout the journey at a set temperature. "This facility allows us to do that," Butler said.