This June just past – at the height of the pandemic lockdown in India – there was a quiet celebration in the Chennai-based Blue Dart Aviation family (which is part of DHL eCommerce Solutions) celebrating its 24th anniversary on June 17.
     Managing Director Tulsi Nowlakha Mirchandaney crossed a huge milestone.

Glorious 50 in Love with Aviation

     “I celebrated my 50th year this June in the airline industry! It’s been a host of deeply fulfilling experiences in various functions. It has often been challenging but I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed great camaraderie with industry colleagues,” she said in an in-house interview.”
     Tulsi is half an engineer – she followed her two engineer brothers – but quit three years before graduating.
     She then joined Japan Airlines in Kolkata and later moved to Mumbai. She was with Air France Cargo in Bangalore and even worked in Delhi and Chennai. The airline jobs were “intended to fund further studies”. But she fell in love with aviation and that is where she is now. In between, she attained an MBA degree in International Aviation from Concordia University, Montreal.

Advocate for Women

     An avid advocate of education for women, she still finds time to take a summer course during her annual holidays “because I find it rejuvenating. It’s an important part of one’s professional arsenal and makeup, and I would highly recommend it to every woman who wishes to challenge herself and explore her full potential.
     “You could be pleasantly surprised,” she said in the interview.

Keeps Looking Up

     At Blue Dart, she ensured the phase-outs of the old fleet of B737-200 freighters and replaced them with B757-200s. She was part of the Blue Dart team that created aviation history in India in 1996 when India’s first domestic cargo airline was set up. No wonder, she believes that “nothing has brought the importance of air cargo to the fore more acutely than the present Covid-19 pandemic . . . air cargo remains a strong, underplayed revenue contributor.”

Tons of Essentials

     Blue Dart has been at the forefront of transporting tonnes of essential cargo to keep the critical supply chain functioning and helping the nation to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
     Domestic flights apart, Blue Dart’s planes flew on the Kolkata-Guangzhou, China-Guwahati-Kolkata route, to bring critical PPE and COVID-19 related medical supplies. The carrier’s freighters touched Dhaka on the Dhaka-Kolkata route even as they flew on the Delhi-Guangzhou, China-Delhi, and Kolkata-Guangzhou, China-Kolkata routes throughout the month of April 2020 and beyond.


Air Cargo & the World at Large

     “Air cargo has often been the sole mode of transportation for relief material during any emergency response situation.
     “The visibility of this vital role has been greatly enhanced because of the extensive grounding of passenger airlines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic unified elements of the aviation industry to respond to an unprecedented crisis, with the transportation of relief material on freighters and even seats.
     “The proven reliability of air cargo certainly bodes well for the future of business.
     “Air freight proved a true lifeline in these critical times.
     “Blue Dart was a part of the Government of India’s ‘Lifeline Udan’ initiative, and contributed its effort to the national endeavour in transporting essential goods and medical equipment. Blue Dart Aviation operated close to 2,800 flight cycles uplifting 40,000 tonnes of which 970 tonnes were international charters carrying urgent medical supplies and COVID-19 related relief material from Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dhaka, Yangon and Hanoi during the pandemic.
     “Among the materials we transported within India and overseas were medical and pharmaceutical supplies including ventilators, PPEs, testing kits, reagents, enzymes, respirators, surgical masks, goggles and gloves.”

Getting Ready For Air Cargo’s Close Up

     “It is a show business term from the movies, but the air cargo industry is going to play an incredibly vital role in the transport of vaccines.
     “So we have got to be ready for our close up.
     “With the large number of clinical trials underway to create a potential vaccine candidate for COVID-19, an influx of business is seen and we expect this to only grow once we have a successful vaccine.
     “Pharmaceutical and life science products require stringent handling and transport conditions to combat any risk of loss of potency or efficacy.
     “Handling and transporting vaccines brings in another dimension to supply chain logistics – temperature controlled logistics (TCL).
     “Having a well-oiled system for providing clients with a seamless TCL service for shipping vaccines, from first mile to last mile delivery would definitely help cope with the need for effective deliveries of the vaccine.
     “However, the sheer volume of vaccines envisaged could pose a huge transportation challenge in meeting the urgent demand. A coordinated, well-planned delivery system would help save lives.
     “The infrastructure and resources critical to the pharmaceutical supply chain will have to be even more adaptive, lean and agile in the foreseeable future.”

Temperature Controlled Solutions

     “At Blue Dart, we have developed a range of superior Temperature Controlled Solutions that provide our clients with extensive and reliable express distribution, dry ice supplies including free top-up replenishments, real-time shipment status information, regulatory clearance, validation services and project management.
     “Not only that, our packaging also is constructed from recyclable, environmentally-friendly and cost-effective material.
     “Blue Dart’s Temperature Controlled Logistics offers solutions from packaging to transportation, from direct distribution of samples, to clinical trial services to ensure that our clients receive their critical shipments within a committed transit time.”

Industry looking For Guidelines

     “We are prepared to handle an increase in volumes of vaccines and are keen to continue working as the ‘Trade Facilitator of India’, a role that we have assumed with great fervour especially over the last few months.
     “We are also awaiting the guidelines that The International Air Cargo Association (TIACA) and Pharma.Aero are developing for the air cargo industry to enable optimal transportation of the COVID-19 vaccine.
     “Taking these guidelines into account, our Blue Darters will be trained and equipped to handle vaccine shipments optimally.”


Artful Blue Darters

     “Blue Dart Aviation readied its international operations in under a month during this pandemic.
     “Gearing up for international operations meant mandatory avionics upgrades, including installation of advanced Flight Management Computers, multi-mode GPS receivers and ADS-B transponders.
     “It’s a tribute to our entire team who worked under the severe constraints of a complete lockdown to meet the compliance requirements for the international operations, and to finally execute the mission, entailing some prolonged periods away from family and home,” Tulsi Mirchandaney declared.
Tirthankar Ghosh

     Unless you have been living on the moon, or accidentally been locked up in a cool box since 1985, Envirotainer has been the go-to way to move pharma and most other cold-chain commodities for the past 35 years.
     In the air with more than 6,000 active temperature-controlled containers in the fleet at Envirotainer, all container types are FAA and EASA certified.
     The company reports that right now it is shipping around 2 million doses of medicines per day for all major pharmaceutical manufacturers covering more than 2,000 pharma trade lanes in over 100 countries at 300 airports.
     In 2020 Envirotainer, we might mention that pioneered the form decades ago, is still out front and leading the way as the only climate neutral company in the cool-can industry.
     We caught up with Mattias Isaksson, Head of Marketing & Communications who must balance the challenge of lockdown against the crushing humanitarian need to be there at the ready to deliver precious life- saving and life-giving cargo to all four corners of the earth on short notice.

FT:  What are the pandemic challenges how has the company met those challenges?
MI:  I believe our challenges are similar to most other companies. How do we ensure our employees are safe while able to continue to work to ensure the delivery of medicines to the people that depend upon them across the world? So far, we have been successful, and we are running at 100% operational capabilities and we have 0 missed orders this year, across the globe.

FT:   What changes, additions or new products are offered or in line? How do you follow up sales?
MI:  We annually re-invest approximately 20% of our revenue back into our network, our fleet and new innovations. For example, we more than doubled our one-way network in late March and took over the reverse logistics to help our customers as air cargo space became scarce for repositioning. Like most other companies we are not able to comment on new innovation before they are launched but as I mentioned, it is a key area of investments for us, so stay tuned for more.

FT:  Are there cooling solutions that are ready to be shipped?
MI:  Yes, there is definitely capacity and solutions available. From talking to many pharma companies, we understand that in the beginning there will be more frozen (-20C) shipments required as there is not that much stability data available. Our dry-ice t-technology solution (RKN and RAP size) is perfect for shipping -20C shipments and we have good availability of units across the world. As stability data becomes available over time, it seems like pharma companies will switch over to more 2-8C solutions. Also, here we have very good availability with our RKN e1 and RAP e2 fleet. We are also building more capacity to meet the demand we are foreseeing.

FT:  What is your view of the capability of the global industry to meet the demand expected, as vaccines and theraputics become available?
MI:  We have clients that remember the crisis at the end of the 90s, when a big launch of a pharmaceutical product led to a shortage of containers. Now there is a fear that the same thing will happen again. There is a calculation originating from IATA, that it will take some 8,000 chartered aircrafts to deliver all vaccines. We get a different, lower number when we look at this.
     Using our container fleet, we have calculated that we can support all upcoming COVID-19 global vaccine shipments. And still have capacity to support all our current business, across the world. We have used some basic assumptions, for example that 50% of the world’s population will be vaccinated in 14 months with two doses per person, starting in November. Shipments will be five doses per vial, and we load each pallet with 6,000 vials. 30% of deliveries will need cold chain shipment by air freight. In this scenario, the total number of doses requiring 2-8C environment delivered over the coming 14 months amounts to 1.3 billion doses and our free capacity, while still supporting 100% of our existing business, is 2.2 billion doses. The equivalent numbers for -20C shipments are 700 million doses and our free capacity is 1.0 billion doses.

FT:  What surprised you in 2020?
MI:  I think it goes without saying that the global Pandemic was something that took us all by surprise. On the positive side, I believe that the temperature-control air freight industry really worked hard to find solutions so that medicines could still be shipped to patients, even though passenger travel dropped to almost nothing, drastically reducing the available cargo capacity.

FT:  What are some of the challenges of operating a cool chain and what can air cargo do to improve its chances of success in that business (pharma?).
MI:  One common challenge we all have is ensuring that all stakeholders have a solid knowledge of what it takes to properly handle temperature-controlled cargo. Envirotainer has trained over 27,000 cold-chain stakeholders for free over the last couple of years to promote good practice and secure, to the largest extent possible, that everyone that touches one of our shipments has the best possible skill-set and training. We are running at 0.1% temperature deviations and 0.0% product loss which I think is a testament to all the hard work.

FT:  Imagine you are at a trade show, virtual or otherwise and someone enters your booth and says, "tell me your story in two minutes, why do you matter Envirotainer and what can I expect from you?"
MI:  Envirotainer is the world leader in air-transportation solutions for temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals. We develop, manufacture and lease temperature-controlled air freight containers for cargo that require a safe and controlled environment during shipment. We combine a truly global presence with the world’s largest, and most CO2 efficient, active container fleet, the most extensive network of stations and more than 35 years of industry expertise, to provide cost-efficient and reliable solutions—available from any location to any destination at short notice. We believe that our largest contribution to a sustainable world is helping our customers have global access to life-saving pharmaceuticals, through patient-safe, reliable and efficient cold chain solutions.

FT:  How has your arrangement with companies everywhere worked?
MI:  We are in continuous dialogues with all our stakeholders to keep each other up to date on what we are hearing and seeing. I believe it is important to continue to keep all information channels open, with all the stakeholders, so that we as an industry are as prepared as we possibly can for when a vaccine becomes available and needs to be shipped across the world. The sooner we get a heads-up, the better we can secure and re-allocate containers if needed. We do have the capacity but need to know a little in advance so that they are in the right place at the right time and in the right quantities
Geoffrey