Brussels Airport is Certifying the Pharma Logistics Chain

Brussels Airport has introduced a dedicated certification program for pharmaceutical logistics as a further step in its ambition to become internationally recognised as a centre of excellence in this niche. “The entire Brucargo community is invited to participate,” says Head of Cargo Steven Polmans.

“The objective of this program is to align and standardize the pharma handling processes as well as to train industry stakeholders through the entire cool chain on and around the airport in order to improve the handling of pharmaceutical cargo,” he says. “The companies are lining up to be certified. We have been forced to limit the number of applicants of the first group to 10.” Steven goes on to say that a substantial number of forwarding agents have already signed up for the program, whereas some others still want to know more specifics before deciding whether or not to jump on the pharma band wagon. I press release to make this project public will be sent out in the course of this week, he announced.

Brussels Airport has developed both a common industry format for the auditing process and a checklist. The auditing format is based on the ‘Good Distribution Practices’ (GDP) as required by the pharma shippers. “The exception between our program and the GDP’s is that the latter only apply to warehousing companies, whereas we want to certify all the stakeholders in the pharma logistics chain: shippers, freight forwarders, ground handling companies, truckers and airlines,” says Polmans. “Moreover, GDP’s tend to differ dependent on the individual companies and the specific countries.”