Pelican BioThermal expands its container-on-demand service in Germany

Pelican BioThermal, providers of the Crēdo brand of insulated containers for cold-chain shipping, is opening a facility in Frankfurt to service reusable Credo parcel shippers, including refurbishment and repair. The network center is located in close proximity to Frankfurt’s Main Airport, a major logistics hub for both pharmaceutical manufacturing and transfer in the region. The latest location enables global Pelican BioThermal clients to receive and return the containers.

The company has been on a fast-paced growth kick for its network in the past couple years; from roughly 20 locations globally at the beginning of the year, it expects to have nearly 100 by year-end. Dominic Hyde, vice president of Crēdo on Demand. “To serve the needs of our clients worldwide, we continue to make significant investments in key locations globally,” said Dominic Hyde, VP of Crēdo on Demand. Our Frankfurt facility offers operational processes and quality procedures replicated throughout all of our expanding network stations and service centers. Our aim is to provide our customers the convenience and flexibility to select the best logistics location for their business.”

Pelican Biothermal, like other providers of cold chain packaging, has been moving to a lease, rental or on-demand basis for several years now, rather than selling containers outright. The practice is more or less standard for pallet-sized, metal “unit load devices” long used in air cargo, but has had difficulties for parcel-size containers. A reuse program meets some customers’ desire for a more environmentally friendly business practice (since the substantial volume of hard-to-recycle containers drops significantly). But a more fundamental driver is the better economics combined with higher-quality (and more expensive to purchase), more-reliable containers. The reverse-logistics part of the reuse loop has traditionally been a major obstacle; now with the growing number of locations that can service the containers, return rates go up and reuse becomes more feasible.