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Amid rapid developments in the testing and production of Covid-19 vaccines globally, Singapore Airlines (SIA) has announced it has made preparations to meet one of the largest and most important logistical challenges in recent history — the safe and effective distribution of these vaccines around the world.
Over the last few months, SIA has been actively engaging various stakeholders across the supply chain and in pharmaceutical export markets to transport the vaccines with speed and reliability.
Covid vaccine: Distribution, not production, is challenge
An internal Covid-19 task force was set up in May 2020 to ensure readiness across all aspects of cargo operations, and manage the crucial task of safely carrying these time- and temperature-sensitive pharmaceutical shipments.
‘Supply chain is everybody’s problem now’
To accord uplift priority
Chin Yau Seng, Senior Vice President Cargo, Singapore Airlines, in a statement said, “We have been working hard to ensure we are ready for one of the biggest and most important supply chain challenges of our generation of the transportation and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines around the world.”
For the financial year ended March 2020, SIA Cargo carried about 22,000 tonnes of pharmaceutical shipments across its network. It is a key transit hub for the transportation and distribution of pharmaceuticals. It plays a key part in the air transportation of pharmaceuticals, particularly biologic shipments, from Europe and India to South-East Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
SIA will make available cargo space on its flights and accord uplift priority to Covid-19 vaccine shipments across the key vaccine trade lanes. This means readying the Boeing 747-400 freighters, as well as the passenger aircraft Fleet which will be deployed on cargo operations to increase the capacity for vaccine transportation where needed.
SIA has signed Master Leasing Agreements with key cold chain container providers such as CSafe, DoKaSch, Envirotainer, Skycell and Va-Q-Tec, to ensure that the Airline has access to sufficient temperature-controlled containers to handle the large volumes of vaccines that need to be transported by air.
The Airline is also part of the joint public-private taskforce set up by the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and Changi Airport Group.
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