German pharmaceutical company opens new cold chain facility
February 01, 2012
NextPharma has recently opened its Cold Chain and Logistics (CLS) warehouse in Werne, Germany.
The new facility is located near the German motorway network between Münster and Dortmund. It has 15,800 square metres of warehouse and 1,000 square metres of office space and can hold up to 26,000 euro-pallets. Initially it will hold 19,000 euro-pallets and employ 40 people.
The narrow aisle warehouse can store euro-pallets in temperatures ranging from +15ºC to +25ºC. It supports around 250 euro-pallets in cold storage (+2°C to +8°C) and offers storage for around 250 euro-pallets of controlled drugs at +15ºC to +25ºC.
The Werne warehouse is also equipped with modern temperature monitoring (under floor heating, hot air blowers and air conditioning.) The building consists of 2 fire sections, 7 conventional docks, 1 jumbo dock and 1 insulated dock. It has wholesaler authorisation and the NextPharma says it will achieve a manufacturing licence for manual re-packaging, bundling and labelling of secondary packaging early next year.
Picking areas support pick-by-light and scan technology and all processes are controlled via radio frequency and barcode scanning, with batch tracing supported and controlled by a Warehouse Management System. Critical life saving drugs can be accessed and dispatched 24/7.
Franck Latrille, chief executive of NextPharma Technologies, commented: ‘The initiative to build the new warehouse came about as a result of more and more products in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries requiring specialist handling and storage and we are excited at the prospect of being able to meet our customers' requirements to an even higher standard.'
NextPharma, a provider of product development, contract manufacturing and cold chain and logistics outsourcing services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, also has warehousing and storage facilities in Bielefeld and Munich in Germany; Stockerau, Austria; Turbenthal, Switzerland; and San Diego, CA, US.