The Current Situation and Trend of Chinese Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Logistics

On March 16-17, 2017 (sixth) China Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Logistics Summit was successfully held in Hangzhou. Cui Zhongfu, Vice President and Secretary General of China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, came to the conference and published the status quo of China's pharmaceutical cold chain logistics. Trends important speech.

First, the monitoring performance of vaccine cold chain changes, 2016 is a milestone for the development of China's vaccine cold chain. In March, the media exposed the Shandong vaccine incident shocked the industry. In just over a month, on April 13, the State Council announced and implemented a new version of the Regulations on Vaccine Circulation and Vaccination Management. The most profound impact on vaccine circulation and vaccine cold chain is Article 15 of the new regulations. The vaccines are organized by the provincial disease prevention and control institutions in the provincial public resource trading platform. After the county-level disease prevention and control institutions purchase from the vaccine production enterprises, the suppliers form regional inoculation units, and the vaccine production enterprises should directly go to the county. Class-level disease prevention and control institutions distribute the second type of vaccine, or entrust a company with cold chain storage and transportation conditions to deliver the goods, and enterprises that receive the second-class vaccine for distribution must not entrust the distribution.

After the implementation of the new regulations, the production enterprises became the main responsible party of vaccine cold chain distribution and the purchasers of cold chain services. Drug wholesale enterprises without vaccine qualifications were forced to withdraw from the vaccine business. From channel distributors to cold chain service providers, especially group companies have responded quickly. Through the re-distribution of resources, the cold chain system of vaccines was established to complete the transition from the vaccine business entity to the cold chain service entity.

In the re-development of the market structure, the cold chain logistics enterprises are undoubtedly the most active category. For the third-party logistics enterprises with perfect network, through the establishment of the standardization system of cold chain logistics of drugs, they are deeply involved in the cold chain market of vaccines. Become a new force in the industry. SF Express is the most typical, and it has achieved remarkable results last year. It is a very representative enterprise in this respect. It can be said that the impact of the new regulations on the vaccine circulation channel and the cold chain service model is fundamental and subversive, and its implementation process is accompanied by various problems. For example, due to imperfect provincial procurement platforms and insufficient cold chain distribution capabilities, there has been a shortage of second-class vaccine products in several regions. On January 15th, 2017, in order to improve the new version of the vaccination management regulations, the General Office of the State Council issued the “Opinions on Further Strengthening Vaccine Circulation and Vaccination Management”, which refines the procurement, storage and use management of vaccines. The processes and measures are more operational, which is conducive to the problems that arise in various places after the implementation of the regulations, and promotes the standardized management of the vaccine cold chain market.

Second, medical quarantine, segmentation logistics in the CRO field. In recent years, China's pharmaceutical market has developed rapidly, not only becoming the world's largest new pharmaceutical market, second only to the United States' second largest pharmaceutical market in the world. At the same time, the development of medical and medical segments such as medical tests and CROs is also worthy of our attention. The CRO market in China has grown rapidly due to the increase in research and development investment, the penetration rate, and policies. In 2015, the market size of CRO is about 35 billion yuan. The size of CRO market in 2016 is expected to exceed 42 billion, which contains huge demand for cold chain. From the distribution of pre-medicated drugs to the recycling of back-end drugs, a very strict and efficient cold chain system is required as a guarantee. According to our research, there are not many companies engaged in this field, but the degree of specialization and standardization of management is still worthy of recognition. The requirements are very high.

Medical tests started late in China, but the industry is growing very fast. Because it is a new type of industry, statistical data is not perfect now. However, according to some special researches, the growth rate of the third-party medical inspection industry in the past five years has remained between 30% and 40%, and will continue to maintain this high-speed growth in the future. The third-party medical inspection institution is independent of the medical institution, and the business is closely related. There will be a large number of biological samples and medical materials flowing during the operation of the business. The cold chain logistics is required as the whole process guarantee, and the requirements are extremely guaranteed. Most of the companies in the cold chain are originally engaged in inspection agencies and internal departments. It is very difficult for third-party companies to cut in.

From the perspective of the overall development of the market, third-party logistics companies are difficult to cut, mainly because the industry lacks independent industry standards. At this point, we are also actively promoting the preliminary research work of pharmaceutical cold chain enterprises and introducing relevant industry standards as soon as possible.

Third, from the perspective of third-party pharmaceutical cold chain logistics, we will make a prospect for the 2017 market. If 2016 is the “policy year” of the pharmaceutical cold chain and the policy direction is adjusted, the company is advancing in the process of exploration and looking for a model that is suitable for the development of the enterprise and matches the market demand. Then 2017 will be a year of explosive growth of the pharmaceutical cold chain. Pharmaceutical business and third-party logistics companies have initially found the path and model of development in the past year, and new industry policies may emerge in the future. For example, the separation of business flow and logistics, we already have a certain ability. With the release of industry logistics demand, pharmaceutical cold chain logistics will show rapid growth.

2017 will be a year worth looking forward to the cold chain of medicines!