The pharma centre it will be the only facility owned by a ground handler dedicated to pharmaceuticals at Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) and follows the opening of WFS pharma facilities in Copenhagen, Johannesburg and Miami. The investment also includes equipment and supplies for the next 10 years.
The Pharma Centre offers both landside and airside acceptance capabilities and will be fully GDP compliant when it opens. It will also become IATA CEIV Pharma certified, as part of an initiative launched by Group ADP within the cargo community at Paris-CDG Airport.
The 2,400 square metre space, located in the centre of CDG’s cargo area, has its own docks and manoeuvring area for the loading and unloading of cargo, dedicated rooms supporting temperature ranges of 15-25°C, 2-8°C and -20°C for loose cargo storage, and two temperature-controlled areas for 2-25°C for cargo ULDs.
A new warehouse management system (WMS) will enable the use of barcode scanning for real-time storage capacity monitoring and management; this will ensure constant tracking of shipments from the Pharma Centre to and from aircraft. Meanwhile, a temperature monitoring solution with a Cloud platform will use sensors to collect temperature and humidity data in real-time, with data accessible via mobile devices.
The centre will be kept secure with round-the-clock CCTV monitoring and will be operated by a team of IATA CEIV-trained pharma handling specialists.
With pharmaceuticals one of the fastest-growing air cargo products, WFS Vice President Cargo France, Hugo Rodrigues, emphasised WFS’ responsibility to meet the high standards required to protect the integrity of such cargoes throughout the cool chain and to help its customers deliver quality services. “At a major air cargo gateway like Paris CDG, we believe it is incumbent on ground handlers to invest in the right equipment to handle pharma products. Once again, this demonstrates WFS’ willingness to invest in new, state-of-the-art facilities when we see opportunities to benefit our customers and our own business,” Rodrigues commented.
