MNX expands life-sciences express logistics services

Following its acquisition by a private equity firm, the Riverside Group, last November, MNX has been expanding its network of sales offices and facilities. The company specializes “dedicated hand-carry, first-flight-out, charter, express courier and 4PL services,” especially for life sciences, aviation and entertainment industries. Most recently it opened offices in Frankfurt and Bangalore, India, and brought on Renzo DiCarlo, CEO of BioPharma Services Inc. (a Canadian contract research organization) as a board member.

For temperature-controlled shipping specifically, MNX says the company provides global purchasing of packaging and supplies, localized packaging services, risk management and trained regional staff. The Los Angeles-headquartered company says that it has services available worldwide, but is concentrating on Asia Pacific and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) growth opportunities.

MNX joins a market that is becoming more crowded as the handful of express providers (for clinical trials) expand their own offerings, and as the biggest global logistics companies eye healthcare logistics as a growth area—even though the growth in number of trials has been flat, and is projected to remain so for the immediate future. But acquisitions like World Courier by AmerisourceBergen point to a potential growth area: limited distribution of commercial, specialty drugs. Whether that market, or others in life sciences, can sustain a courier-based distribution system remains to be seen.