Emirates SkyCargo has launched two new solutions for the global healthcare industry under its refreshed and rebranded “Life Sciences and Healthcare” product range.

In a statement, Emirates SkyCargo noted that its “Life Sciences and Healthcare” portfolio encompasses its existing pharma transport solutions; and adds two new solutions: Emirates Vital and Emirates Medical Devices.

“Our Pharma business is already a market leader, and each week we move around 2 million kilogrammes of pharmaceutical cargo across the globe. Since 2015, we’ve invested over US$200 million to build our capabilities and now we have very strong expertise and insights into the pharma and broader life sciences space,” said Nabil Sultan, divisional senior vice president, of Emirates SkyCargo.

He noted that Emirates SkyCargo coordinated with its customers in coming up with new solutions to support the global health industry's advances in personalised patient treatments and meet the growing need for priority services in air cargo logistics to move sensitive materials and equipment.

An example is those used in the research of sophisticated therapies like gene editing and cell therapy.

“We are on a mission to help the world work better, not only for our customers but also for their end customers — individual patients. By expanding our product range and ensuring these solutions are purpose-built and future-fit, we aim to ship more vital treatments and supplies to benefit more lives around the world,” Nabil added.

“New era” in global healthcare air logistics

Emirates SkyCargo noted that transporting clinical trials, human organs and tissues, and cell and gene therapy shipped by Emirates Vital (AXT) will be a “white glove service” with the Emirates control tower team monitoring every shipment.

“We will speed up connection times in Dubai for shipments with transit times of under four hours by utilising the bulk hold of the aircraft and dedicated vans on the ramp to move the shipments to the connecting flights,” it added.

It said that Emirates Medical Devices (AXM) is another new stand-alone product to support the movement of equipment for the diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and monitoring of diseases — designed to transport everything from ventilators and test kits to X-ray machines and MRIs, to ensure that all cargo moved follows the developing Medical Device Regulations and Good Distribution Practice (GDP) compliant.

SkyCargo’s existing range of solutions for the safe and reliable transport of pharmaceuticals are Emirates Pharma (AXS), Emirates Pharma Plus (AXD), and Emirates Pharma Active (AXC).

Emirates SkyCargo offers belly-hold cargo capacity on Emirates’ fleet of wide-body aircraft, as well as in 11 dedicated Boeing 777 freighters. It also operates two cargo terminals at its hub in Dubai.

The terminals offer a total cargo capacity of around one million tonnes per year, with the ability to raise this to 1.3 million tonnes — and there is 15,000m2 of dedicated storage for temperature-sensitive goods such as perishables and pharmaceuticals.

The cargo carrier said its team will be working closely with specialist freight forwarders globally to roll out these new services.