Companies and governments around the world are working on ways to establish cold-chain storage and delivery systems for vaccines such as the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech shot, which must be shipped and stored at ultra-cold temperatures and can only last at standard fridge temperatures for up to five days.
The company has partnered with local distributor DPD Laser, jointly owned and controlled by The Laser Group and European DPDgroup, which will buy the units from Renergen and then rent them out to its health-care warehousing and logistics clients in SA and the Sadc. “Our biggest challenges ... we've got very high ambient temperatures in SA, we've got long distances to travel and often when you get to the point of vaccination there is a lack of infrastructure. There could be load-shedding,” he said referring to frequent scheduled power cuts.