Marken, one of the leading specialists in healthcare logistics, is expanding its activities aroundthe world with new branches to handle its continued growth and has added new services.
The US-based firm, which provides clinical supply chain solutions for the pharmaceutical andlife sciences industries, has opened four expanded branches in Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Edinburghand Beijing. This follows new facilities in the UK, South Korea, India and Argentina in recentmonths and gives the company some 30 offices and depots worldwide.
In Los Angeles, Marken significantly expanded its office and warehouse space adjacent to itsexisting LAX facility in order to reflect the growing demand for complex clinical drug distributionand biological sample shipments from their US west coast clients.
In Beijing, the company will move into a new facility which will allow the planned build outof their new pharmaceutical services depot while allowing sufficient space for branch logisticsoperations.
In Edinburgh, Marken has moved into expanded office and warehouse space adjacent to theairport and close to its previous office. In Germany, the firm has relocated its branchoperations into a new facility near Frankfurt Airport which will also become the home of itsEuropean central depot.
In the UK, Marken moved to a new 18,000 sq ft operational hub at Feltham, close to HeathrowAirport, earlier this year. This facility boasts 9,000 sq ft of warehouse storage, 600 sq ft ofcontrolled ambient storage, over 1,400 sq ft of secured and caged controlled substance storage andover 250 cubic feet state of the art monitored walk-in cold and frozen storage space.
In Asia, the company expanded in India with new branches in New Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune andBangalore to add to the Mumbai facility. It is developing a new purpose-built GMP compliant depotin Bangalore due to be complete by the end of 2012.
In May, the company opened an office in Seoul, its first location in South Korea, where itpreviously managed “thousands of shipments” a year in and out of the country through partners. Itsnew GMP Compliant depot in Buenos Aires, Argentina, opened in late 2011.
“Due to the growing demand for complex IMP and biomarker shipments, we have decided toenhance our facilities and expand our operations in these strategic locations. We have takenthis unique opportunity to combine our planned depot strategy with our need for expanded logisticsoperations and will combine them wherever possible. It makes sense to leverage our provenlogistics expertise with our depots and thus offer our clients a complete service in the clinicallogistics market,” said Wes Wheeler, Chief Executive Officer for Marken. “We will be announcingfurther details about our depot expansion in the near future, and will remain flexible as wecontinue to meet the needs of our clients.”
Earlier this year the company launched a new BioSystem shipping system for biological samplesusing technology for prolonged temperature control while also standardizing box size for optimumfreight costs and dry ice use. Using three standard box sizes, the system keeps biological productsfrozen for 72 hours or more.
Marken, which supports over 49,000 clinical investigators in more than 150 countries,had more than 60 per cent of the specialty courier market in biological samples transportation, anda higher share of the cold chain segment of that same market last year, according to a study thatit commissioned from an unnamed major consulting group.
