Out of all the areas of warehousing that have seen massive growth lately, one of the biggest has been the rise of refrigerated pharmaceuticals.

Modern medical products often require more carefully-regulated storage methods than before, such as increased temperature regulation and safer storage from cross contamination. As a result, the need for refrigerated pharmaceutical storage is higher than ever before – experts predict a growth of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of products by 2025, with little signs of stopping afterward.

What does this mean for your warehouse? Well, that all depends on what you can offer. If your warehouse can supply the right kind of refrigerated storage, in a way that can keep the pharmaceuticals as safe as possible, you might be able to offer a very valuable service to potential customers.

How to Offer Refrigerated Pharmaceutical Storage

What type of refrigerated storage will you focus on?

The first step to determining how much refrigerated storage you can offer is to determine exactly what kind of storage you’ll focus on. A lot of warehouse managers tend to be surprised at first by the varieties of refrigerated storage that different medical products need, such as:

• Vapor Compression: One of the oldest methods of refrigerated storage, vapor compression focuses on evaporating droplets into a liquid refrigerant form to cool the air throughout the entire area
• Evaporative Cooling: Evaporative cooling systems work on a similar principle, with the biggest difference being that the air is pulled in from the outside, relying on a system that can draw in external air and process it to work at the right temperature
• Blast Freezing: Blast freezing systems, also referred to as “shock freezers”, are high-powered freezers similar to the type seen in food storage that rapidly reduce the temperature of a product to keep it below freezing temperatures as soon as possible.

By choosing a refrigeration system early on, you can better determine what types of products and refrigeration you can offer your clients.

What kind of storage options can you offer?

Above and beyond your refrigeration method, understanding what types of storage you’ll need in the refrigerated area can help expand your potential storage offerings and give you an idea of how much room you’ll have to work with. Due to the requirements of pharmaceutical storage, you will need to focus on using NSF certified shelving or medical shelving to guarantee the safety and freshness of your products, as well as needing freezer shelving to withstand the harsher conditions of the freezer itself.

What sort of processes will your team need to be trained in?

No matter how experienced and well-trained your current staff may be, the handling of pharmaceutical products is a whole new ball game compared to whatever else they may have been storing. Before you can offer your refrigerated storage space for pharmaceutical products, make sure your team has been briefed on any potential process and policy changes that may come about as a result of your newfound business. These can include proper disposal of out-of-range or expired products, preventing cross-contamination, and the like.

Once you can answer these questions, you’ll be in a much better position to offer refrigerated pharmaceutical storage to potential customers and clients – especially now, when demand for these goods is as high as ever.