Frankfurt Cargo Services (FCS), a subsidiary of Worldwide Flight Services (WFS) has handled its first shipments of Covid-19 vaccines from German biotechnology company BioNTech as the airport gears up to play a prominent role in the global recovery from the coronavirus.

In a statement, it said the doses of the vaccine were handled at FCS’ facility at Frankfurt’s CargoCity Süd before being loaded into the cargo hold of a Royal Jordanian Airlines’ Airbus A319 bound for Amman.

FCS, the largest airline-independent cargo handler at Frankfurt Airport, has been completing its preparations to support Covid vaccine shipments since last year as part of WFS’ Project Coldstream initiative to coordinate the group’s global response to the anticipated transportation of some 16 billion doses of vaccine.

It said in Frankfurt, this has included gaining CEIV certification by IATA in September as well as the Pharma and Good Distribution Practice (GDP) certification by the European Union in November respectively to ensure compliance with the quality requirements of airlines and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

For the vaccine shipments, FCS’ dedicated pharma handling personnel takes responsibility for all the required warehouse processes from the point of delivery to the airport, checking the integrity of packaging, and constantly monitoring the temperature of the consignment to ensure it maintained strict -70°C requirements.

Shortened handover times for ramp transportation to the aircraft were also introduced, allowing doses of the vaccine to remain in FCS’ temperature-controlled pharma storage location until close to the flight departure time.

WFS currently operates 12 dedicated pharma facilities in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brussels, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, London, Madrid, Miami, New York JFK, and its €10 million state-of-the-art Pharma Centre at Paris CDG. These facilities are all either IATA CEIV or Good Distribution Practice (GDP) certified or compliant.