The Logistics of Covid-19 Vaccine initially put a lot of increasing pressure on Air freight service

The air freight market is said to become a battle with the participation of Covid-19 Vaccine. The pressure on vacancies is gradually increasing, as many flights are full, not to mention the urgent transit time and the possibility of large requisition coming from the Governments.

“Singapore Airlines has started loading and unloading vaccines in Amsterdam in the past few days” – The air forwarder in Europe announced: “I have to constantly unload many other kinds of cargo to free space. The battle has begun”.

Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine was urgently approved by the UK government earlier this month and is currently being produced in Belgium as well as the three states of Michigan, Massachusetts and St. Louis in the United States. Not only that, BioNTech Group is considering putting the production lines in Germany into operation.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is very sensitive to temperatures and must be frozen to minus 70 Celsius degrees. But according to IATA President – Glyn Hughes, the vaccine is easier to be transported than refrigerated vaccines.

“Pfizer’s packaging includes external coolant and freezer. Vaccines are always closed and sealed” – Glyn explained.

The Covid-19 vaccine logistics chain will be very complex, with a worldwide network, especially depending on production locations and government orders. Along with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, the world will have at least five potential Chinese-made vaccines, as well as the two vaccines of Moderna and AstraZeneca that have been publicly announced.

So far, many orders have been made. Turkish Airlines last month shipped the Chinese vaccine batches from Beijing to Brazil, and AirBridgeCargo began distributing the Chinese version of CanSino in cooperation with UPS and logistics company Marken.

In early December, Alibaba’s smart logistics network Cainiao said it was working with Ethiopian Airlines to send temperature-controlled pharmaceuticals from Shenzhen to Africa, twice a week.

However, drugs and vaccines are not the only Covid-19 that is disrupting the air transport market. “Tons of Covid-19 test kits are being shipped firstly from Korea to the EU, mainly to Frankfurt,” a forwarding company revealed. More specifically, 1,000 tons will be shipped directly on the EU / UK service in December ”.

Another forwarder said: “We are having loading and unloading problems and seeing skyrocketing rates from Korea to Western countries.”

Not only that, but the Korean test kit is also facing competition from auto parts, as both Hyundai and KIA are urgently shipping goods to Vienna and Frankfurt. These shipments were originally scheduled to be by the sea, but the forwarding company said the sea route is now “overloaded until January”, creating new pressure on aviation.

“There are a lot of negative things going on,” said a delivery officer, “As soon as you think it can’t get worse, the situation immediately turns into tragedy”.