ArcticRx Cold Chain Breakthrough Prevents Pharmaceutical and Food Loss

About half of all temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals shipped overseas are wasted en route due to cold chain deficiencies. Keeping products like medicines stable for extended periods is hard, even with batteries to power refrigeration. Batteries weigh containers down, ratchet up shipping costs, and hold a charge for only so long. But the power problem is just one in an exhaustive list of cold chain headaches when moving perishables hundreds to thousands of miles.

Indiana-based ArcticRx has launched a shipping container to break through the logistics barriers. The startup’s co-founders, M. Shane Bivens and Stuart M. Lowry, are focusing on commodities at high risk for damage and urgently needed for global health impacts, like vaccines, blood components, and other life-saving products.

Their brainchild is a dishwasher-sized pod that can be used to transport and store materials for 21-plus days on dry ice and other cooling agents; that’s about five or so times longer than other options, Bevins says. The heavy-duty plastic containers can maintain temperatures as low as -78 degrees Celsius, critical for vaccines especially.

“With our unique design and thermal technology, we’ve created a way to efficiently get products to parts of the world where this has not been possible with existing logistics,” says Bivens. He describes the pods as being like coolers on steroids that leverage ultra-low temperatures to move products safely and with less complexity.  

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Bringing the innovation to fruition meant solving all sorts of long-standing supply chain problems. After flown-in shipments reach the ground, they may be left sitting on tarmac for too long. Power issues cause refrigerators and freezers to shut down. Unpredictables like severe weather bring more challenges. And furthering the complexity, it can take up to a dozen carriers to get one shipment from the plant to the clinic’s doors, which requires adding steps to keep products cold.

At the top of the list of fixes was finding a way to transport products in one container with sufficient thermal control to withstand the entire journey.

As shipments are transferred from planes, trucks, rail, and or boat, they must be placed in other containers and rechilled, increasing risks for disruptions. But ArcticRx pods can maintain a protective temperature on any transportation mode. After they reach their last stop, contents can be stored in the pods for a while longer.

Finding the right materials was another puzzle piece. The partners ultimately landed on a rugged blend of polyethylenes (PE) that was originally developed for plasticized pallets. The pods can be reused hundreds or more times, Bivens says. Should they eventually fail, they can be recycled.

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Going with a durable, sustainable plastic takes care of drawbacks with polystyrene foam, a common staple for shipping the products ArcticRx targets. Polystyrene holds adequate temperatures for a very short window; it breaks down with use; and is rarely recycled. Countries on the receiving end don’t want it; several have banned it to prevent resulting microplastics from flowing into the oceans surrounding their communities.

“Companies make alternatives to polystyrene, but they often have performance issues too. So, we said, let’s use the most advanced material for durability and performance and make it recyclable and reusable,” Bivens says.

With its Indiana plant cranking out 45 to 85 units weekly, the startup has inked its first few contracts and is in early conversations with other pharmaceutical companies, relief and defense organizations.

Next on the agenda is to market to food industries. That was actually the original plan, before ArcticRx’s birth. Though the earlier product, while similar in spirit, was a very different technology: a food-sharing platform to help with another accessibility problem: reaching people in remote food deserts.

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Then COVID hit, nearly collapsing the hospitality sector, the primary investor. So, the entrepreneurs pivoted to the cold chain route.  While COVID brought the food share application to a halt, it actually propelled this next idea.  Existing supply chain issues became even more serious at a time when it was critical to quickly move vaccines around the world.

Networking with health ministers, hospitals, and relief organizations around the globe has brought to light more possibilities.

“A lot of our conversations have been around bringing in medications, but the people we speak to are intrigued by the concept of receiving a box that can be reused for other purposes – a box that can come in with medications, be cleaned, and go out with foods,” Bivens says.

Jodee Smith, an ArcticRx board member and company advisor, has collaborated with Bivens and Lowry from the time they were developing the food sharing platform. In her work at Indiana University’s Environmental Resilience Institute, she focuses on building currently lacking capacity to grow food for local institutional buyers (schools, hospitals, etc.). So, the idea behind the cold chain technology holds a place close to her heart.

Global supply chain shocks can disrupt basic needs for survival and recovery. Transportation and storage of supplies such as food and pharmaceuticals can be sporadic. But ArcticRx’s innovation opens up promising first-time opportunities, she says.

“These pods can provide access to refrigeration and freezing capabilities that are unrealized by farmers, food pantries, and food banks along with smaller aggregation and distribution hubs that support regional food systems. Imagine if you could just have a once-a-month dry-ice replacement instead of a power bill,” she says.

While the masterminds behind the innovation are homing in on health and, soon, food equity, they see potential for a breakthrough like this to disrupt other spaces. Even electronics and instrumentation tools have temperature-sensitive components that today have limited transport options.

Says Lowry, “The technology inside ArcticRx will spark a cold chain revolution reducing waste and carbon emissions, offering sustainable transport and storage. The impact of a [system] with no power requirements will reshape circular economies.”

Most exciting, he says, “will be the myriad of products we discover on a global scale that can be better protected and transported with ArcticRx.”