Taking steps to expand its healthcare logistics presence, Atlanta-based global freight transportation and logistics services provider UPS said this week that it has invested $48 million into 27 temperature-controlled global freight cross-dock facilities, located in what it called “key U.S. and international markets,” including Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
The company explained that these facilities are optimized for speed and also short-term storage between air and ground movements and also maintaining specific temperature requirements. And it added that this investment helps to boost UPS’s global cold-chain network, with demand increasing for medicines that require strict temperature ranges between 2-to-8 degrees Celsius, 15-to-25 degrees Celsius, and frozen.
What’s more, the company said that temperature-sensitive biologics are seeing high industry demand and pegged to rise at an 8.3% compound annual growth rate through 2033, coming in at an estimated $39.1 billion, based on data from Growth Market Reports.
Key benefits of this $48 million investment cited by UPS were:
- 27 temperature-controlled freight cross-docks creating seamless movement across transportation modes. All facilities are compliant with IATA CEIV Pharma certification, an industry-recognized standard for pharmaceutical handling and quality;
- A single integrated network eliminating handoffs between providers, reducing risk and increasing control;
- Greater accountability and real-time oversight protect high-value, temperature-sensitive therapies from excursion and disruption; and
- 24/7/365 control tower proactively monitoring shipments, flags risks and enables rapid intervention to keep critical products moving
UPS VP of Healthcare Strategy Kiel Harkness told LM that this investment is being driven by a fundamental shift in what UPS’s customers are shipping.
“We’re seeing a growing mix of higher-value, temperature-sensitive and time-critical healthcare products that require more precision and control across the supply chain,” said Harkness. “This also enhances global connectivity across key lanes between U.S., Americas, Asia and Europe, linking regional manufacturing with global markets. This investment is part of a broader, multi-year effort by UPS to strengthen and continuing expanding our integrated network so we can reduce risk at key handoff points, maintain control across modes and give customers more consistency in how their products move.”
When asked what this investment means for UPS’s customers, he said it really comes down to control, consistency, and confidence, in that the investment allows it to reduce handoffs, improve visibility across the entire shipment journey, and move more seamlessly between air, ground and distribution.
“That helps minimize variability, where most risk shows up, and improves reliability for high-value, time- and temperature-sensitive shipments,” he said. “Ultimately, it gives customers greater confidence that critical therapies will arrive on time and in the right condition.”
Looking ahead, Harkness said that this is part of a broader effort to keep strengthening UPS’s integrated, global logistics network as its customers’ needs become more complex.
“We’ve been investing ahead of that shift, closely tracking how the industry’s biologics pipeline is evolving toward higher-value, more time- and temperature-sensitive shipments,” he said. “We’ll continue to expand capabilities that improve control, visibility and consistency, particularly in cold chain and time-critical logistics, with a focus on scaling across the network so we can stay ahead of demand.”
Another key driver for this expansion, according to UPS, focused on how the biologics pipeline is increasing complexity across cold-chain logistics operations, with data from PharmaSource pointing to around one in three newly-approved drugs being a biologic and more than 85% of them in need of temperature-controlled handling. It also noted that with cell and gene treatments, mRNA platforms and GLP-1 injectables coming to market, it is resulting in healthcare supply chains becoming more complex and risk-sensitive. A key driver of that risk, it said, is temperature excursions, adding that cold-chain failures are estimated to come in at around $35 billion annually—while also contributing to 50% of global vaccine waste, according to data from the WHO.
“Biologics and personalized treatments are driving better, more targeted care for patients,” said John Bolla, President of UPS Healthcare. “These investments reflect our commitment to continue to align our leading end-to-end supply chain to protect innovative treatments and diagnostics, supporting better patient outcomes.”
This investment serves as the most recent example of ways in which UPS has expanded its healthcare logistics presence through strategic investments, such as it did with: its November 2022 acquisition of Lombardia, Italy-based multinational healthcare logistics provider Bomi Group; its January 2025 acquisition of Germany-based healthcare logistics services provider Frigo Trans and BPL; and the expansion of its Incheon, Korea air hub, which focused on supporting fast-growing pharmaceutical trade flows.
