Cold chain logistics specialist, Kool-ex has partnered with India’s largest industrial real estate developer, IndoSpace to build customised, GDP/GWP compliant, temperature-controlled, pharma distribution centres across the country.
Kool-ex and IndoSpace will jointly design and set up three warehouses in the first phase by 2021 in proximity to Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.
With 42,000 pallet positions capacity, each of these warehouses will be the largest standalone cold chain facility in the country. The warehouses will enable consolidation in fragmented pharma distribution, efficiency in operations, reduction in inventory, reduced handling losses, compliance and cost optimisation, besides complete visibility in the chain. Furthermore, these will be certified Green Warehouses with 100 per cent solar back up.
Kool-ex plans to set-up 10-11 warehouses by 2023 making it the largest pharma storage footprint in the country.
Rahul Agarwal, Director, Kool-ex Warehousing said, “We aspire to become the largest dedicated player in the pharma warehousing space offering over 10-11 GDP/GWP compliant, multi-client, pharma distribution centres over the next three years.”
“These units will be equipped with a modern, state-of-the-art temperature controlling system that will ensure the safety of sensitive cargo based on Good Distribution Practice (GDP) and Good Warehousing Practice (GWP),” Agarwal added.
Rajesh Jaggi, Vice Chairman– Real Estate, Everstone Group said, “We are delighted to partner with Kool-Ex as they venture into temperature-controlled warehousing. The amalgamation of IndoSpace’s warehousing expertise along with Kool-ex’s cold chain logistics ecosystem will help in building state-of-the-art infrastructure to support the growing needs of cold chain pharma warehousing and distribution in India. ”
Kool-ex is in advanced talks with investors to raise growth capital for these initiatives and has appointed KPMG in India for financial advisors to the process.
Kool-ex is also set to offer pharma passive packaging solutions – in partnership with TESSOL, a cold chain solutions provider – to design and supply passive cooling boxes for intercity and intracity movement of sensitive time-bound, temp controlled medicines such as vaccines, insulin, etc.
These boxes will have a different insulation technology based on phase change material instead of the currently used EPS (THERMOCOL). They will need much lower charging (cooling) time of eight hours, against the current 48-72 hours, and will enable multiple uses, coupled with features such as live track and trace.
Rajat Gupta, CEO, TESSOL said, “We are offering an “atmanirbhar” solution that guarantees temperature compliance and traceability of pharma products till the last point of delivery, hence ensuring the efficacy of the medicine. The solution aims at simplifying the whole process of pharma packaging and distribution, adding technology to ensure end-to-end traceability.”
Kunal Agarwal, Director, Kool-ex Warehousing added, “We are providing a highly scalable, environmentally sustainable, regulatory compliant and technology-driven solution for secondary and last-mile distribution of temperature-controlled pharma products like biologics and vaccines including the much awaited COVID-19 vaccines.”
Kool-ex is also in advanced talks with one of India’s IT majors to jointly design and develop Blockchain for pharma, enabling access to barcoded medicine packs which can be then tracked and traced in real-time across the distribution chain till it reaches the patient’s hand.
