DUBLIN, Ohio — With a combined 45 years in business, the Third-Party Logistics (3PL) Services and Cardinal Health Packaging Solutions (CHPS) teams’ deep expertise contributes strategic advantages to the biopharma industry, supporting the path from Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to patient delivery. Offering advanced packaging solutions, cold chain expertise, and a relentless focus on innovation, 3PL and CHPS work together to help biopharma manufacturers bring emerging therapies to market faster and more efficiently.
The journey to best-in-class
In 1995, a Cardinal Health customer approached the company’s founder and then CEO, Robert D. Walter, with a need to manage storage and distribution to get specialty pharmaceuticals to care sites, and, ultimately, to the patients who need them. That customer request inspired Cardinal Health to create 3PL Services, staffed with a team of experts in specialty warehousing and distribution. In the three decades since, the team has grown to become a full-scale packaging and logistics support partner, helping biopharma manufacturers get their emerging therapies to market with speed and accuracy.
While initially located in Lakeland, Florida, the team moved in 1997 to LaVergne, Tennessee, a central U.S. transit hub near other Cardinal Health distribution centers, and later added a second site in Reno, Nevada, to expand distribution capabilities.
“The creation of 3PL is a great example of how we adapt and grow to respond to our customers’ evolving needs,” said Craig Cowman, president, Biopharma Solutions and Strategic Sourcing. “From day one, the team has been dedicated to building and sustaining a resilient and sustainable biopharma supply chain, helping to ensure that patients have access to life-changing and, in some cases, life-saving therapies.”
Biopharma manufacturers face multiple challenges in distributing specialty treatments, including cell and gene therapies and orphan drugs (medications developed to treat rare diseases). Many of these products are temperature sensitive and require ultra-cold storage, shipping and handling, as even minor temperature changes can compromise their efficacy. In addition, some of these therapies have a very short shelf life, which means they must be shipped immediately with careful coordination between manufacturers, logistics providers and healthcare professionals.
“By the time manufacturers get into the second or third phase of clinical trials for a new treatment, they begin to think about their commercial strategy and how they're going to get their new product to patients and that’s where we come in,” said Joel Wayment, vice president and general manager, 3PL and CHPS. “We work as an extension of a manufacturer to help navigate the back-end of commercializing a pharmaceutical product, including FDA approval timelines, product labeling, packaging, storage, and determining distribution channels for shipping to sites of care.” (Read more about how the team empowers biopharma manufacturers to bring emerging therapies to market.)
Strengthening capabilities to meet evolving supply chain needs
In July 2010, a pharmaceutical packaging solutions company called A+ Secure Packaging was created in response to the growing demand for specialized pharmaceutical packaging. 3PL Services partnered closely with the packaging company and quickly realized how valuable it would be to include packaging solutions with our logistics offerings. Cardinal Health acquired A+ Secure Packaging in 2017 and renamed it CHPS. The teams’ combined capabilities provide a strategic, consultative and comprehensive approach to meet biopharma manufacturers’ needs.
Now in its 15th year, the CHPS team continues to innovate, assessing existing and evolving secondary packaging solutions for vials, syringes, and cold chain products to optimize the patient experience by ensuring pharmaceutical products remain sterile and effective for use. (Secondary packaging solutions are typically the boxes or containers that the product is placed in for distribution, whereas primary packaging solutions are the first layer that protects the product before being boxed for shipping.)
Today, the 3PL and CHPS leadership teams average 19-plus years with Cardinal Health. Their deep expertise has enabled them to successfully process more than 25,000 cell and gene therapy orders since the first CAR-T launched in 2017.
3PL and CHPS’s capabilities have evolved to include temperature-controlled storage and transportation, Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA)-compliant serialization and traceability, and inventory and returns management. They’ve expanded refrigeration space at the LaVergne site, to store products with extreme storage requirements at temperatures as low as 2 - 8° Celsius. They’ve also developed a digital ordering tool, Advanced Therapy Connect, which has helped streamline the cell and gene ordering process for healthcare providers.
As the biopharma industry continues to grow, so do 3PL and CHPS; they plan a new distribution center in the Midwest, expected to be operational within the next two years.
“Our growth and evolution continue to bring value to both manufacturers and providers,” Wayment said. “We’re helping support the patient journey with reliable packaging and logistics services that safeguard products and help ensure they arrive at sites of care on time. Safe and reliable delivery is critical for patients facing rare diseases: We ensure they get the treatments they need when they need them the most.”
