Ep. 12 - Navigating Sustainability in Healthcare Logistics - Air Canada Cargo, Cold Chain Technologies

Gain invaluable insights into the multifaceted approach to sustainability within the pharmaceutical industry and discover how diverse stakeholders can collaborate to address its most critical aspects. 

Join Frank Van Gelder and his guests offering first-hand accounts of their efforts to drive sustainability forward:

• Janet Wallace, Managing Director Cargo Operations & Transformation, Air Canada
• Kristof De Smedt, Global Business Unit Director, Cold Chain Technologies

"How we look at sustainability is to help the life science healthcare industry to optimize packaging but not downplaying performance. Quality is paramount, we should not give in on the performance of our products but we are indeed actively looking to reuse solutions, find other insulative materials, etc."

"I don't think we can turn a blind eye to it. From my perspective, the customer is going to take me there regardless, so I need to get on board and better understand what all these requirements are and figure out how I'm going to try to meet those requirements. So there's a lot of education to be done."

"Sustainability and acting aligned with that is going to come as a condition of employment. If we can't follow that trend or we cannot actively participate, we will basically be out of business, because it's around us. There are a lot of ideas, but I see that there is no strict standard yet. There is a lot of talk on CO2 reduction, etc., but there's no clear guideline yet, so that will come, but the early adopters will be the ones that continue and have a long-term plan."

"I think the gap between packaging solutions and the airline is the customer. The customer is driving where my attention is going to be focused. They evaluate the airlines based on the trade lanes and our ability to become sustainable. So when we're looking to compete within the marketplace, we need to meet the customer expectations and the customer is detailing exactly where we need to be."

"We need to get to the point where we're looking at empty miles, what's moving around the planet and how is it coming back. The reverse logistics becomes paramount." 

"The earlier you start the discussion with all the stakeholders, the better the solution that comes out. Not all airports are created equal, and not all handlers are created equal, so even when we participate in the evaluation of the trade lanes, sometimes we have the aircraft, we have the packaging, and we have the customer, but we just don't have the handling capabilities to meet that and we have to opt-out. Because that's the truth."

"Anybody who's going to be developing a plan to participate in any kind of mitigations is going to have to have a long view and make some investments up front that will only benefit us in the long term. And those are difficult business cases to build and pass along because everybody wants to reap the rewards immediately."