New UPS facility aims to improve patient care

UPS has announced the opening of a new healthcare facility that provides a boost to businesses shipping time-sensitive, temperature-sensitive and patient-critical healthcare products.

Located in the Sydney suburb of Horsley Park, the 13,400 square-metre space features the latest in advanced technologies and digital innovations, allowing healthcare businesses to meet ever-evolving patient needs.

“The healthcare industry is changing, medical science is changing, patient care is changing — so the way we manage the delivery of patient-critical healthcare shipments needs to change too,” said Stephen Stroner, Managing Director, UPS Australia.

“The rollout of the COVID vaccine demonstrated that effective logistics can literally make a difference between life and death. It has helped pave the way for advancements in areas such as telemedicine and biologistics, where handling and distribution of products can require very precise conditions. At the end of many UPS healthcare deliveries, there is a patient, a person, relying on us to deliver safely and on time. This is what the addition of another state-of-the-art facility into the UPS network allows us to do.”

As well as offering product storage at temperatures as low as -20°C, the Horsley Park facility is also equipped to handle UPS’s latest healthcare innovation, UPS Premier. This highly specialised shipping service combines near real-time monitoring, ‘first in first off’ prioritisation, expedited recovery and next-level visibility and control of packages travelling within the UPS network.

To minimise the building’s environmental footprint, it features motion-activated LED lighting, programmable lighting systems, a solar-powered hot water system and reflective paint on the rooftop that deflects heat away from the building to reduce air-conditioning usage.

It is also the company’s first Asia–Pacific logistics facility to offer an innovative reusable packaging loop solution that works by reusing cold chain packaging to cut down on single-use waste and save costs for healthcare customers.

“Working with partners that prioritise sustainability is no longer a luxury, it is now a requirement for many businesses, so we need to make sure we’re offering our customers the solutions they want,” said Chetan Talcherkar, UPS General Manager, Healthcare Operations.

“UPS takes its commitments to environmental sustainability very seriously, and we’re proud to say that this solution saw 77% of customers’ cold chain packaging reused and more than 324 tonnes of waste prevented from going to landfills in 2021. It’s a win-win resulting in less waste and significant cost savings for our customers.”

The site opens at a time of huge growth and innovation in the medical industry. In 2021, Australia’s medical device exports were estimated to total more than AU$1.8 billion, while exports of pharmaceutical products reached AU$3.6 billion in 2020, according to the International Trade Administration.

Image credit: iStock.com/sorn340