DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight specialist of Deutsche Post DHL Group, has awarded the 2019 Carrier Award for Reliability and Excellence (CARE) to Air France KLM Martinair Cargo, Swiss WorldCargo and Qatar Airways Cargo. The CARE Awards recognize the industry’s top transporters of temperature-sensitive life sciences products. The winners were presented with an award by Thomas Mack, Head of Global Air Freight, DHL Global Forwarding, at the 19th Life Science and Healthcare Conference held in Miami on June 19, 2019.

“Transporting life-saving products is an immense responsibility, one with risks that far outweigh those in a typical supply chain environment. We understand the challenges that come with temperature-sensitive products and the imperative need to provide a holistic range of patient-centric solutions to deliver them in a safe and timely manner,” said Larry St Onge, President, Global Life Sciences & Healthcare, DHL.
“We have worked together with our customers and air freight carriers to create tailor-made solutions that help pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers connect with their patients and navigate today's challenges, anticipating tomorrow’s, all while providing a higher level of transparency, faster delivery and unparalleled expertise within a compliant global network,” adds Thomas Mack, Head of Global Air Freight, DHL Global Forwarding.
Recipients of the DHL CARE Award, which was first instituted back in 2016, offer exceptional service, quality, ground handling and innovative technologies and processes for their shipments. The differences in scores across all the carriers in the pool of nominees were extremely close, underlining the high level of expertise and service quality provided by the laureates.
“Air France KLM Martinair Cargo is honored and grateful to receive the DHL Care Award 2019. For us, this is a recognition of our constant focus on pharmaceutical logistics,” said Noud Duyzings, Vice President, Americas, at Air France KLM Martinair Cargo. “We have not only invested in the IATA CEIV re-certification, but we have innovated the product, providing transparency before, during and after the pharma journey, and we are constantly investing in our cool chain program. While we are receiving this award, at the same time at Schiphol, we are inaugurating our new enlarged 15+25 Control room. Because we care.”
Risks in supply chains like inclement weather, geopolitical issues and pandemics are evermore an issue of concern. As carriers strive to provide best-in-class services in the life sciences and healthcare sector, they increasingly invest in improving their pharmaceutical infrastructure, fleet and quality standards. Together with carriers, DHL is leveraging data analytics and digitization to access infrastructure and capability data, along with the key shipment data. DHL has also invested in tools such as Resilience360, the first of its kind in the industry, which is an end-to-end supply chain risk management platform that alerts customers about global incidents and risks to their global supply chain in almost real time.
“Swiss WorldCargo is delighted and honored to receive the 2019 DHL CARE Award, this time for the fourth year in a row. This achievement underscores not only our work with DHL, but also both our companies’ continued commitment to best-in-class quality and service offerings in the field of temperature-sensitive cargo,” said Ashwin Bhat, Head of Swiss WorldCargo. “We look forward to a continued strong partnership between our organizations and will continue with our focus on our reliability and quality commitment in the future.”
Good Distribution Practices (GDP) certifications, based on the European Union guidelines on how to best handle medicinal products, as well as the Center of Excellence for Independent Validators in Pharmaceutical Logistics (CEIV Pharma) of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) have continued to increase in the last year, with many carriers also expecting certification in the near future.
“We are very pleased to receive this prestigious award from our partner DHL. Since the launch of our QR Pharma product in January 2014, we have been constantly innovating and introducing enhancements in the product and handling to ensure the cool chain is seamless for all kinds of temperature sensitive cargo,” said Guillaume Halleux, Chief Officer Cargo at Qatar Airways. “In addition to those improvements, we firmly believe in customer centricity and are thankful to partners such as DHL for placing their trust in our services. This award serves as a recognition of our excellent service levels and we will continue to provide high quality solutions and services to all our customers worldwide.”
With Thermonet, DHL’s own temperature controlled air freight service for the Life Sciences and Healthcare sector, the Group delivers regulatory compliance and higher visibility throughout its own international network of GDP-certified life sciences stations for air and ocean freight. DHL began seeking certification for these stations by the IATA CEIV Pharma in 2016. Since then, over 30 stations have been CEIV Pharma certified, following successful employee training courses and third-party audits. DHL provides forward-thinking, intelligent healthcare while solutions focusing on connecting, caring, complying and innovating.