b'16American Journal ofTransportation ajot.comNephron Pharmaceuticals logistics planWith the COVID-19 pandemic came a surge in demand and South Carolina-based Nephron Pharmaceuti-cal suddenly needed a new logistics plan.By Chris Barnett, AJOT For most of its 32 years,versations with their people, NephronPharmaceuticalCor- I really felt UPS understood porationofWestColumbia,small package movement by SouthCarolina,manufacturedground.respiratory inhalant medicinesKennedymovedNeph-and shipped them to US hospi- rons logistics and shipping to tals on FedEx pallets. BusinessUPSHealthcaredivisionin was solid. Atlanta in 2018.Ryan McLau-In 2017 the company startedrin,senioraccountmanager focusing on the Federal Druginchargeoftheprogram, Administrations (FDA) 503 Btold theAmerican Journal of known shortage list which isTransportation, Some of the wherehospitalsandsurgicalearly challenges were around centersrequeststerileinject- packaging. They were selling ablemedicinestheydesper- intravenous bags and bottles ately need and cannot quicklywhich started leaking and we get from other manufacturers. (PLANcontinued on Thefirstyearinthatpage 25) Ms. Lou Wood Kennedy, CEO and owner of the privately-held Nephron speaking at a press conference.business, we only had $5,000 inannualsalesfromthat startupdivision,Ms.Lou Wood Kennedy, chief execu-tiveofficerandownerof theprivately-heldNephron, told the American Journal of Transportation.t heCovid B oomThen the COVID-19 pan-demic hit, and sales exploded. Suddenly,wehadtremen-dousdemandfromsome 3,000 US hospitals who had shortagesofsterileinject-ables and were delaying sur-geries, she said.Immediately,thecerti-fiedwoman-ownedpharma-ceutical company had another big problem.While they could rampupsterilecompound-ingproductproduction,the logisticsanddistributionof thelargelytemperature-con-trolled medication was a huge problem. For 20 years, we were a FedEx shop, shipping pallets bytruckloads,saidKennedy. ButIwasnowverycon-cernedabouthowwecan handle a large volume of small packages. Its an entirely dif-ferent world.For example, when Neph-ron shipped pallet loads of its medicines,thefreightoften wenttoawarehouseora distribution center for break-downandsub-distribution purposes. As part of the FDAs 503 B program, the US gov-ernmentrequiresparticipants to send the product direct to the licensed recipienta hos-pital or a surgery center. Ironically, a friend of Ken-nedys who had retired from UPS after 40-plus years of ser-vice, suggested that Nephron talk to the worldwide delivery company because it not only specialized in small package andexpeditedshipmentbut because it also had a separate healthcarelogisticsdivision experienced in air and ground shipping of medicines among other health-related products. SaidKennedy:Aftercon-'