UPS Opens Second China Site to Support Growing Healthcare Market
The new 22,000m2 Hangzhou site was officially opened last week, specifically to support the growing needs of pharmaceutical companies in storage and distribution, and will become UPS’ fourth healthcare facility to open in the Asia-Pacific region in three years, and the second in China.
“Asia is a very large and developing market with a rapidly emerging middle class – all of whom have growing healthcare needs,” Bee Koong Lim, a UPS spokesperson told Outsourcing-Pharma.com. “We believe opportunities in this region and in the healthcare segment space are plentiful for many players in the market.”
According to a report commissioned by UPS, domestic spending on healthcare in China stood at $277bn in 2011 and is growing exponentially.
“This makes healthcare in China a very high priority for UPS and our Hangzhou and Shanghai facilities will enable our clients, whether foreign or local, to capture growth in the Chinese healthcare market.”
The Asian market has seen a burst of activity from the pharma industry in recent years and third-party services firms have been quick to follow, including logistics and supply chain companies.
DHL, Marken, World Courier and Yusen have all expanded their offerings in this emerging market in the last two years, and though Koong Lim would not discuss UPS’s rivals, she did say UPS Asia had been investing heavily in its infrastructure and network capabilities to support the growth in the region.
She did, however, suggest that pharma companies were choosing to outsource companies like UPS as those firms who “operate their healthcare logistics in-house tend to incur high costs of building their own infrastructure and the limitations of managing their transportation networks on their own.”
The new facility includes a dedicated on-site Quality Assurance team and a fully-automated product tracking system. The site has already bagged itself a client in the form of Merck & Co. (known as MSD outside US and Canada) who joined UPS at last week’s ribbon cutting.
DKSH Opens Korean Distribution Centre
As further evidence of the rise of Asia in the healthcare market, market expansion company DKSH has opened a new distribution centre in Seoul, South Korea.
The site will have a capacity of over 20,000 stock-keeping units as well as dedicated cold chain and redressing facilities.
“The new distribution centre underlines our commitment to continue our investment and growth in Korea,” said Charles Toomey, head Business Unit Healthcare at DKSH. “It will increase operational efficiencies, enhance our capabilities and drive our business expansion.”
The news comes in a busy few months for DKSH in Asia, having seen facilities upgraded in SE Asia and contracts penned with Bayer and Pfizer in Cambodia, and GSK in Hong Kong.
