DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight specialist within Deutsche Post DHL, expands its service offerings for the Life Sciences and Healthcare industry in 13 locations in the Americas, adding to the company’s worldwide Thermonet network of Certified Life Sciences Stations. The Americas Thermonet locations added to the network include: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile; Bogota, Colombia; Toronto, Canada; Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil; Mexico City, Mexico; Panama City, Panama; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Caracas and Valencia, Venezuela; and Boston and New York in the U.S. The facilities offer 35° to 46° F (+2° to +8° C) cold storage space to serve DHL’s global customer base in the Life Sciences & Healthcare sector with temperature-controlled air freight shipment needs. DHL Global Forwarding previously added eight locations in the U.S.: Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., to its extensive list of U.S. Thermonet facilities. “With the expansion of our Thermonet certified facilities this means consignors and consignees have access across the Americas to a reliable end-to-end cold chain,” said David Bang, CEO of LifeConEx, a part of DHL Global Forwarding. “These DHL Global Forwarding facilities include highly trained personnel capable of handling any type of temperature sensitive pharmaceutical or biomedical items.” DHL is constantly expanding its Thermonet network of Life Sciences Certified Stations and plans to integrate more than 65 stations across the globe by the end of 2014 and 80 by the end of 2015. All the facilities are audited against globally defined Good Distribution Practices (GDP) to ensure conformity across the network. Several of the facilities provide temperature monitoring, dry ice replenishing, active and non-active container handling to ensure product quality at all times. For the upcoming months, DHL plans to further expand some of the station’s capabilities with additional storage space. In recent years, temperature controlled products for the pharmaceutical industry have gained significant importance. The driving force is biotechnology products, which generally must be kept within a strict temperature range during transportation. The worldwide sales volume of this product category tripled from USD $56 billion in 2004 to an estimated USD $167 billion in 2013.[1] Further growth is expected in the future. DHL Thermonet provides seamless temperature visibility along the supply chain, 24/7 proactive monitoring and intervention based on pre-determined touch points and DHL’s RFID SmartSensor technology, that is also GDP certified. Temperature data and logistics events can be accessed via the proprietary LifeTrack IT platform that also houses all product-specific SOPs, facilitating early intervention and simplifying document control.