Pelican BioThermal, a global name in temperature-controlled packaging, announced cold storage options covering temperature ranges of below 80°C to minus 20°C.

The company said the new offerings will help meet the growing need for increased deep frozen temperature ranges and payload capacities as pharmaceutical companies and supply chains prepare to distribute COVID-19 vaccines.

Many of the company’s product lines now include a variety of frozen options that cover temperatures of –20°C, -35°C, -50°C and -80°C.

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“We know that pharmaceutical companies are in all phases of the development process for vaccines and therapeutics and working tirelessly to bring safe and effective drug products to market quickly,” said Greg Wheatley, vice president of worldwide new product development and engineering at Pelican BioThermal.

“Our engineering team matched this urgency to ensure they have the correct temperature controlled packaging to meet them where they’re at in drug development for the pandemic recovery, from discovery to distribution,” he added.

Pelican BioThermal’s container products use phase change material (PCM) and dry ice systems to provide frozen payload protection for 72 hours to more than 144 hours. Payload capacities range from 1 to 96 litres for parcel shippers and 371 to 1,686 litres for pallet shippers.

In related news, Pfizer and BioNTech said their BNT162b2 vaccine candidate is safe and 95 percent effective and the duo are moving to have it approved by the US FDA for emergency use. This type of vaccine needs to be stored and transported at ultracold temperatures below -70°C.