SkyCell partners with Virgin Atlantic in pharma shipment deal

SkyCell, a manufacturer of pharma containers, has partnered with Virgin Atlantic to contribute to its safe, secure and sustainable shipment of valuable vaccines and pharma products. Virgin Atlantic will be using SkyCell containers covering the full range of biologics transit temperature requirements: -80°C (-112°F), -25°C to -15°C (-13°F to 5°F), +2°C to +8°C (36°F to -46°F), and up to +15°C to + 25°C (59°F to 77°F).

The partnership hopes to provide customers confidence that their pharmaceutical shipments will arrive from point A to point B safely, as the containers have an average runtime of 202 hours, and a failure rate of less than 0.1%, according to SkyCell. This is compared to an industry standard failure rate of up to 12%, which cost the pharma sector $34.1 billion in 2019, in figures cited by the company.

This collaboration will allow Virgin Atlantic to deliver pharmaceuticals through its Pharma Secure service, which was introduced for all urgent, valuable and vulnerable pharma and life sciences shipments last year.