SME forwarders looking to enter pharmaceutical logistics should avoid competing directly with multinationals and instead focus on building specialist capabilities, says Pharma.Aero secretary general Frank van Gelder.
Rising demand from clinical trials and time-critical healthcare shipments, together with the emergence of advanced therapies, is creating opportunities for SMEs, but Mr van Gelder said operators must demonstrate the requisite expertise, systems quality and dependability.
他告诉 载星: “SME forwarders should become indispensable specialists. The opportunities are in clinical trials, time-critical healthcare, advanced therapies, specialised regional corridors and high-touch services around research centres and hospitals.
“An SME can combine local knowledge, quick decision-making and trusted international partners. Emerging connections with Chinese and Indian innovation ecosystems can create further possibilities, provided operators build real expertise rather than simply market a new lane.”
But he warned forwarders off entering the pharma market simply because of the prospect of attractive margins. GDP compliance, qualified personnel, validated procedures, and temperature-control competence were needed to form the foundations of any operation.
Going further, he noted certification alone was not demonstrative of an understanding of the requirements of different pharmaceutical products, with conventional medicines, clinical trial shipments, and personalised therapies presenting a fundamentally divergent set of challenges.
Mr van Gelder added: “Agility without discipline is not resilience, it is risk. The winning combination is systems, specialist knowledge, human adaptability, and trusted partnerships. Collaboration is essential because no one company controls the full patient-critical chain.
“The future is not necessarily about who owns the biggest network, it is about who can orchestrate the most reliable one. Do not compete on price alone. Compete on expertise, reliability, flexibility, and trust.”
This, he added, included an ability to respond to disruption, which offered SMEs a way to distinguish themselves. Mr van Gelder argued that experienced and empowered teams could sometimes adapt faster than larger organisations with slower governance structures.
Workforce resilience, he said, meant giving employees the confidence and authority to raise concerns and act when contingency plans no longer worked.
“Resilience is not created by a contingency plan. It is created by people who can act when that plan no longer works,”