Haulier plugs into specialist pharmaceutical niche – and demand grows

MANY ROAD road haulage firms prefer to avoid perishables. The inevitable result – a niche market was opened for just such transport, and has been filled by a new firm. SA Refrigerated Transport opened its doors in Spartan in December 2007, and business classes could use its example to illustrate how to fill a market niche. “I opened my own company to fill a request by Aspen Pharmacare which was desperate for refrigerated vehicles to transport Anti Retroviral Drugs into Africa. I bought one truck, a 28 tonne MAN with 24-tonne cargo capacity,” company founder Philippa Walker told FTW. Pharmaceuticals are temperature-sensitive and should be kept below 25° C. Other shippers often send them as part of normal loads, without refrigeration. “The problem is when a truck is stuck at Beit Bridge or any other border post and has to wait in summer temperatures for two days to cross the border. You will find the temperature inside the container peaking to as high as 50 to 60 degrees, if one places a temperature logger inside one of the cartons. High temperatures cause a breakdown in the medication. Either the recipient can reject it or it can make the patient really ill. I saw there was this market for properly and sensitively transporting injectables in clean trucks across borders, as well as veterinary medicines. There is a big demand for those,” said Walker. No sooner had the refrigerated transport of medicines begun than requests arrived to move all manner of perishables. “Out of the blue there was a huge demand from perishable shippers and we expect demand to rise even more by summer,” said Walker. By then SA Refrigerated Transport will have a second new 28 tonne truck in operation to meet demand.