Brenda Marie Rivers
The U.S. Army has awarded Iceland-based pharmaceutical logistics company Controlant Global a potential one-year, $25M contract to monitor the global delivery of Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine that requires storage in extremely low temperatures.
The Army said in an award notice posted Nov. 25 on SAM.gov that the Global On-Site Monitoring contract tasks Controlant Global to monitor the COVID-19 vaccine’s temperature at designated locations until administered.
Controlant Global will use radio frequency identification technologies to track and monitor stored contents while in transit through the “cold chain†approach of transporting vaccines at specific temperatures, according to the document.
The company will manage a central control facility for live monitoring that includes push notifications for assessing temperature variations and product conditions.
The Army will obligate funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act as part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative aimed at delivering a COVID-19 vaccine to 300M Americans.
According to a Nextgov report, the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine currently awaits emergency use approval from the Food and Drug Administration and has a storage temperature requirement of minus 70 degrees Celsius.
Controlant Global began contact work on Nov. 25 and is slated to continue through Nov. 24, 2021.
The company has an office in San Francisco and offers a “cold chain as a service†platform as well as specialized services for supply chain visibility, process optimization and compliance operations in support of the pharmaceuticals industry as well as the food and beverage sector.
