NCA launches 'NCA Pharmacare' based on Envirotainer's total solution

Nippon Cargo Airlines (NCA, head office in Narita-shi, Chiba; President: Tadamasa Ishida) has signed a global lease agreement with Envirotainer for active temperature-controlled air cargo containers.

The agreement is in support of the airline's new NCA Pharmacare product for the transportation of high value, highly sensitive pharmaceutical products. Japan in the world's second largest pharma market worth an estimated US$80 billion per annum and this is the first time an airline in Japan has developed a specific product based on the use of Envirotainer containers.

NCA has been trialling the service for 12 months using Envirotainer's RKN e1, RKN t2, RAP t2 and CLD t2 containers and has received extremely positive feedback from its customers.

However, Mr. Kuniaki Inaoka, Senior Manager, Cargo Business Division of NCA says the development of a long-term partnership with Envirotainer is about much more than just containers. He said: We have previously purchased 60 containers so we are very familiar with the quality of Envirotainer's product. This time we are leasing containers but our decision to work with Envirotainer is also based on its network of stations, handling procedures, quality and accreditation programs and the company's ability to increase our knowledge in the carriage of high value, sensitive life science products.

Niklas Lönnkvist, Director Healthcare, Asia Pacific & Middle East of Envirotainer added: Our ability to offer NCA a total solution means we will be working closely together to develop the share of pharma products moving by air cargo to and from Japan. There is a considerable opportunity in Japan for the development of air cargo transportation of pharma in active containers as the majority of products are still transported using passive insulated boxes or no special packaging.

NCA Pharmacare is NCA 's priority freight product, which provides a specialized handling based on tailored SOP (Standard Operational Procedure) set up as per customer needs and characteristics of customer's temperature sensitive shipments, 24 hours contacts in case of emergency and container condition check at each stage of handling in the airports. Customers can specify internal temperature of Envirotainer container and ambient temperature of cargo hold of the aircraft.