Gubba Cold Storage, which operates a chain of cold storages, has strengthened its cold chain network to support the Covid vaccines set for pan India rollout.

The company has added capacity for 10,000 pallets of vaccines across four cold storage centres set up with an outlay of ₹30 crore.

Gubba Kiran, CEO of Gubba Cold Storage, told BusinessLine “As the pharma industry was busy creating Covid-19 vaccine, we started creating vaccine compliant cold storage facilities. We are unveiling our cold storage facilities in Medchal, Yellampet and Annaram in Telangana with a capacity of 10,000 pallets for Covid-19 vaccine preservation before January-March 2021. These facilities have a capacity of 3 crores vaccine doses.”

“We have 18 cold storages with 1.32 crore cubic feet capacity, across 10 locations of Hyderabad and Aurangabad. Our Vaccine cold storage facilities are designed to function in 3 temperature zones of 2-8 degree centigrade, 15-20 degree C and --20 degrees C and relative humidity (RH) in the 50% to 70% range,” he said.

The company, which offers cold storage solutions across sectors, including the pharma sector, is setting up facilities in Telangana and planning to expand the pharma-compliant cold storage facilities at Vizag and Mumbai. “The vaccine storage facilities will conform to WHO GDP (Good Distribution Practices) with online temperature monitoring system,” he said.

“The company set up its first pharma compliant cold storage facility in Hyderabad three years ago to address the pharma cold chain gap. Then we were among the first in South India to set up such as a chain. Gubba already has one of the biggest pharma compliant dedicated cold storage facility with 8,800 pallets and serves more than 50 Pharma clients,” he said.

While there are more than 10,000 old chain storage facilities spread across various parts in the country, barely 0.5 per cent of these centres are capable of vaccine storage/compliant, he explained.

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