Budapest Airport joins IATA CEIV Pharma certification network

Budapest Airport has introduced the CEIV Pharma pharmaceutical logistics standard in Hungary with the professional guidelines of IATA. The past year has highlighted more strongly than ever that the pharmaceutical healthcare sector relies heavily on the air freight industry. Not only during a pandemic, but in all circumstances, it is important that healthcare shipments reach the consignee as quickly as possible, under strictly regulated conditions, while maintaining their quality. Budapest Airport, led by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), is introducing a quality assurance system covering all phases of pharmaceutical transport in Hungary. Launched in conjunction with shipping, hauling and ground handling companies, the project aims to ensure that healthcare shipments reach their destination quickly and safely under strictly controlled conditions, ensuring quality throughout the delivery process.
Partners of Budapest Airport for the CEIV Pharma quality assurance system in Hungary are Agility, Airmax Cargo, cargo-partner, Prevost and airport ground handling companies Celebi and Menzies also joined. In this context, the regulations also cover the development of companies’ facilities, tools and processes and the further training of employees; thus, every step of the drug logistics process can be carried out under controlled conditions.
“Over the past year, healthcare shipments, medical aids and medicines have received worldwide attention. However, pharmaceutical logistics is not only of paramount importance during a pandemic; That is why we have decided to guarantee that, in the long term, medicines will arrive where they are needed in the future, even faster and safer than before, as part of a new quality assurance program, ”said Dr. Rolf Schnitzler, CEO of Budapest Airport. He emphasized: “Such a large-scale project can only be implemented through cooperation, therefore on behalf of Budapest Airport I would like to thank all the actors in the supply chain, especially IATA and our connected cargo community partners, for their support.”
“We are very pleased to welcome Budapest Airport and selected players from the local cargo community to the CEIV Pharma program,” said Rafael Schvartzman, IATA’s Regional Vice President for Europe. He added, “In the current epidemic situation, such partnerships will strengthen the resilience and competitiveness of the air freight industry. As we are now tackling the most important logistical challenge ever in the history of aviation – delivering billions of doses of vaccines around the world – this initiative is a positive signal that air freight is on the battlefield to support the industry, adapting to the urgent needs of standardization and digitization.”
“On behalf of the member companies represented by the Pharmaceutical Division of MLBKT, we believe that the introduction of the CEIV Pharma quality assurance system, professionally managed by IATA, will ensure 100% assurance that the storage of medicines in air transport meets GDP requirements throughout the process, as all participants in the process They receive training and the processes and documentation management are also audited, ”emphasized Mária Kellner, Head of the Pharmaceutical Division of the Hungarian Logistics, Purchasing and Inventory Company. He added, “We are pleased that as many companies involved in air transport as possible will join this system, as this certification gives us pharmaceutical customers greater certainty that the relevant regulations will always be observed or complied with when transporting medicines by air.”
CEIV Pharma is one of the most widely used systems; nearly 300 large corporations, airlines and airports on all continents of the world have already benefited from the certification. With its introduction, Budapest Airport and its partners join a global network that opens up excellent new export-import opportunities for Hungary.
The quality assurance process will be introduced based on the developments of IATA and the GDP system used by the European Union and the WHO, in such a way that the system fully complies with the Hungarian regulations.