The agreement supports the airline’s new NCA Pharmacare product for the transportation of high value pharmaceutical products. This is the first time an airline in Japan has developed a specific product based on Envirotainer containers.
The airline has been trialling the service for 12 months using Envirotainer’s RKN e1, RKN t2, RAP t2 and CLD t2 containers.
However, Kuniaki Inaoka, senior manager of the Cargo Business Division of NCA, says the development of a long-term partnership is about more than just containers.
‘Our decision to work with Envirotainer is also based on its network of stations, handling procedures, quality and accreditation programmes and ability to increase our knowledge in the carriage of high value, sensitive life science products,’ he said.
Niklas Lönnkvist, Envirotainer’s director of healthcare, Asia Pacific & Middle East, added: ‘There is a considerable opportunity in Japan for the development of air cargo transportation of pharma in active containers as the majority of products are still transported using passive insulated boxes or no special packaging.’
NCA Pharmacare is the airline’s priority freight product, which provides specialised handling based on tailored SOP (Standard Operational Procedure) set up according to customer needs and the characteristics of their temperature-sensitive shipments. There is 24-hour contact in case of emergency and a container condition check at each handling stage in the airports. Customers can specify the internal temperature of the Envirotainer container and the ambient temperature of the cargo hold of the aircraft.
