About CSafe

CSafe Sustainability Perspective

Commitment to Quality Ensures Access to Safe Medicines

As a leading temperature-controlled shipping solution provider to the pharmaceutical industry, CSafe is directly involved in the distribution of more life-saving medicines than any other provider. We know that each medicine, market and shipping lane has unique and critical requirements for thermal performance, shipment volume and duration. In addition, we know our pharma partners also have financial and sustainability commitments to achieve. Through our broad portfolio of active bulk air cargo, passive bulk air cargo, parcel and specialty solutions, we are committed to providing products that offer the highest level of quality and reliability in the relative solution types, and also offer ranges of price and sustainability benefits to provide customers the options they need to find the right solution for each product, lane and corporate objective. By providing the industry’s most comprehensive range of solutions across the continuum of performance, volume and product life cycle, CSafe gives our customers the best chance of ensuring safe delivery of medicine, while also offering the flexibility to make portfolio decisions related to total delivered cost in terms of financial and environmental impacts.

CSafe Philosophy on Sustainability

When it comes to managing and mitigating the environmental impacts of our business, CSafe has always taken a comprehensive view to total system efficiencies. We realize there is no magic solution that delivers zero environmental impact and impenetrable thermal performance. This is why we maintain a balance of efforts across operational efficiencies, product design and performance, and a robust fleet of reusable solutions. It is the collective impact of this suite of benefits that enables us and our customers to safely deliver critical medicines while minimizing negative impacts to our planet.

Operational Efficiencies to Reduce Energy Consumption and CO₂ Impacts

Over the last five years, CSafe has implemented multiple operational efficiency improvements across our global site network to reduce waste and energy consumption. These improvements include driving efficiencies in how we design solutions, including making use of thermal simulation technologies to reduce the use of environmental test chambers during the design process, as well as continuous improvements in how we assemble our parcel solutions and how we procure raw materials and components. We have also made our facilities more energy efficient by installing LED lighting with motion sensors at all of our U.S. facilities, with further plans to upgrade newly acquired Softbox Systems UK facilities.

In Q1 2022 we engaged a third-party consulting firm to conduct an audit of Scope 1 & 2 Green House Gas (GHG) emissions across 22 owned sites. Twenty of the 22 sites showed energy consumption well below manufacturing industry averages. We have identified mitigation actions to address the two outlier facilities, including reconfiguring our Long Crendon lab facility to enable installation of an upgraded power supply and relocating our EWR service center to a more energy efficient facility. Both mitigations will be implemented in Q1 2023. As a matter of practice, we will continue to monitor GHG emissions across our network and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.

We also have made improvements to reduce emissions in the deployment and use of our leased products. Over the last two years, CSafe has leveraged artificial intelligence tools to improve efficiencies of our fleet deployment and minimize the need to reposition empty containers.  In 2022 we have achieved a 3% decrease of empty container movement vs 2021. This resulted in a CO₂ reduction of 671 metric tons.

Product Design and Performance

One of the most significant ways we help our customers save energy is in our product design. By ensuring we are using highly efficient materials in our production, we are able to deliver the highest level of reliable thermal protection in the industry with less energy consumption.

We follow a rigorous Quality process at all of our facilities. Our active solutions manufacturing locations have the following certifications:

• FAA part 21 & 145 (US)
• EASA part 145 (EU)
• Civilian Aviation Association Part 145 (Singapore)

All of our passive solutions manufacturing sites are ISO 9001 certified. Our Monroe, Ohio, facility is also ISO 13485 certified. We have achieved ISO 14001 at our Redditch, UK, facility and are pursuing ISO 14001 at other locations in our global network of manufacturing and service locations.

All of our shippers are tested to internationally recognized standards certified by the International Safe Transit Association (ISTA) including specific modules for thermal performance and distribution testing. CSafe thermal testing labs are also certified by ISTA. This standard will be further deployed in the legacy Softbox Systems thermal testing labs in 2023.

Sustainability Benefits: CSafe Active Solutions

• CSafe’s micro-glass fiber vacuum insulated panels (VIP) installed in our active solutions provide on average 70% better thermal insulation when compared to cell-based insulated hybrid containers and 60% better thermal insulation when compared with other active air cargo containers (CSafe achieves an R value = 20 vs an R value = 8 for competitive containers). In addition, CSafe active air cargo containers require 18% less charging time, resulting in savings of 250W less power charging consumption per unit used and provide 20% more payload space enabling greater volume efficiencies.
• Additional environmental advantages of our active containers include:
  • Elimination of need for pallets
  • No need to dispose of non-biodegradable packaging materials
  • All materials replaced in our Preventive Maintenance Rebuild Program are 100% recycled
    • 100% of batteries replaced
    • 100% of coolant used
    • 100% of scrap metal repairs at Service Centers

Sustainability Benefits: CSafe Passive Solutions

• Our range of SoftboxVIP parcel shippers use state of the art VIP insulation materials, resulting in improved thermal performance with less total materials per unit to achieve optimal thermal performance and payload to shipper footprint ratio.
• Our product development strategies focus on improved sustainability credentials for our existing and future products. We are currently developing sustainable, non-plastic, curbside recyclable passive solutions to minimize landfill deposits and increase use of sustainably sourced raw materials.

Sustainability Benefits: Reusable Solutions

CSafe is the only temperature-controlled shipping solution provider to offer a complete range of active and passive reusable bulk air cargo and parcel solutions to the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, more than 70% of our total revenues are achieved through a reuse model.

• Our recently introduced Advanced Pallet Shipper, offers a more cost-effective bulk air cargo lease-model solution for lower risk lanes.
• Our Softbox ULT reusable ultra-low temperature vaccine shipper has achieved a greater than 90% reuse rate and supported the distribution of more than 6 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

Our range of Softbox VIP parcel solutions feature a refurbish and reuse program in four temperature ranges (+15°C to +25°C; +2°C to +8°C; -15°C to -25°C; and -80°C) and five payload sizes (5L, 8L, 16L, 35L, 56L).

Conclusion

At CSafe, we recognize no one solution is “better” than the rest when pharmaceutical shippers factor in all of the parameters that need to be considered around thermal performance, cost, speed and sustainability.  The key to optimizing a global pharma cold chain, as well as corporate sustainability goals, is finding the right blend of solutions across the varying needs within the global supply chain to optimize where and when one can.

To help improve the ease at which our customers can quickly and effectively identify the best solutions to meet their performance, cost and sustainability needs, CSafe is developing a proprietary Solution Selection Tool that will enable customers to compare and contrast various features and benefits across our solution continuum, so they can make informed tradeoffs to meet corporate goals.