The last few years have marked a turning point for the pharmaceutical logistics industry. While pharmaceutical distribution has ramped up significantly, capacity for temperature-controlled logistics has tightened dramatically. Customs delays have caused many shipments to be held in staging areas without adequate environmental controls, while others have passed through general-purpose cargo terminals because the specialized infrastructure required did not exist. The outcome is a system that has functioned, but with visible strain and with approximately $38 billion in logistics and trade-loss waste each year.
As a result, industry leaders have begun to confront long-standing vulnerabilities that were previously accepted as unavoidable: fragmented temperature-controlled models, multi-leg routes and storage environments not optimized for sensitive, high-value pharmaceuticals. Under routine conditions, these gaps create inefficiencies; under stressed or emergency conditions, they become systemic risks.
While many logistics providers have adapted existing networks to meet pharmaceutical requirements, Frontier Scientific Solutions was designed from the outset around how temperature-sensitive medicines are stored, handled and transported as a single, controlled system.
The Power of Purpose-Built Infrastructure
To address the core challenges facing the industry, leading companies are shifting towards purpose-built, pharmaceutical-specific infrastructure that minimizes hand-offs and reduces environmental variability that can undermine product integrity. Frontier Scientific Solutions, headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina, is pioneering this shift. The company was intentionally designed to remove structural points of failure by centering its operating model exclusively around pharmaceutical handling, focusing on direct transport routes, cGMP-grade storage, fewer touchpoints and engineered redundancies that maintain consistency throughout the journey.
When temperature-controlled materials move between fewer facilities, the opportunities for drift, mishandling or delay decrease significantly. When those facilities are cGMP-compliant and supported by advanced environmental monitoring systems, the risk of excursions is reduced further still.
By designing storage environments to tightly control temperature, dwell time and hand-off conditions, Frontier reduces exposure before products ever enter transit, allowing downstream transport to preserve product integrity rather than manage preventable risk.
Frontier’s design philosophy integrates purpose-built storage, advanced building management systems and continuous environmental monitoring into its global gateway model, mirroring the level of control required for sensitive pharmaceuticals such as advanced biologics and cell and gene therapies.
Leveraging Strategic Temperature-Controlled Gateways
As customs delays have become one of the most significant bottlenecks in global pharmaceutical distribution, operating through uncongested gateways has become increasingly critical. Frontier Scientific Solutions operates two strategic sites, Wilmington in the United States and Shannon in Ireland, creating a transatlantic gateway between North America and Europe that supports fully temperature-controlled storage and direct airside access for pharmaceutical products.
Both locations also leverage Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) designation, enabling streamlined customs processes, duty deferrals and more predictable movement of sensitive materials. By pairing cGMP-controlled storage directly with airside access at these gateways, Frontier minimizes idle dwell time and uncontrolled staging, two of the most common sources of temperature risk before loading ever begins. These capabilities help the industry avoid prolonged ground delays, where products historically have spent more time waiting in uncontrolled environments than in transit.
Fewer Touchpoints, Less Risk
Another major evolution in pharmaceutical logistics has been the move towards simpler, more direct global movement. Traditional models often route shipments through multiple cargo hubs, adding hand-offs and environmental exposure. Frontier Scientific Solutions’ direct and exclusive air service between the United States and Europe reduces touchpoints by c.75% and delivers transit that is c.89% faster through critical stages of the journey, offering a more controlled end-to-end supply chain while ensuring that patients remain the highest priority. This level of simplification is possible because storage design, hand-off processes and transport prioritization are engineered together, allowing products to move directly from
controlled environments into dedicated transit rather than through layered, multi-purpose networks. In addition to reducing risk, these direct routes lower overall carbon impact by minimizing unnecessary handling and dwell time.
Creating a Solution for the Future
While logistics providers have made important advances in recent years, many of these changes have been incremental. Frontier Scientific Solutions represents a more fundamental shift, one aligned with today’s scientific, regulatory and operational realities. The company’s model offers a blueprint for what a re-engineered pharmaceutical supply chain can look like: fewer touchpoints, greater environmental control, simplified customs processes and strategically positioned global gateways designed for direct distribution.
At its core, this approach reflects a shift towards end-to-end product integrity, where risk is designed out across storage, handling and transport, rather than managed after the fact. There is a clear opportunity for leaders across the pharmaceutical supply chain to build networks that are more reliable, more predictable and safer in the moments that matter most. Given what is at stake for patients, it is the path forward.
