Shanghai IMPERIAL International Freight Forwarding Co., Ltd., and Shanghai Runda Medical Technology Co., Ltd., a Chinese provider for healthcare services, will be cooperating more closely in future. This is the essence of a strategic alliance the two companies have concluded during the Transport Logistic China Expo in Shanghai.  The purpose of these cooperative efforts is to expand services and logistic support for in vitro diagnostics (IVD). The items being handled here are medical products, including diagnostic equipment and the reagents, used to examine specimens taken from the human body.  In China, Runda is one of the leading providers of products and services for in vitro diagnostics. The company delivers the above mentioned IVD products to hospitals, laboratories and resellers, but is also responsible for equipment maintenance, repair and training of medical personnel. Runda is now planning to build a new company headquarters in the south of Shanghai for business development including a logistics centre. This logistics centre is to be operated by Shanghai IMPERIAL International Freight Forwarding Co., Ltd. The range of services includes both warehousing and distribution of IVD items within China.  “With our entry into the healthcare field in China, in this case in vitro diagnostics, we are tapping a field of business that we will be expanding in future,” emphasises Christian Berlin, Managing Director at Shanghai IMPERIAL International Freight Forwarding Co., Ltd. “Supplying IVD materials to physicians, hospitals and laboratories is a vigorously growing market, not just in China, but all around the world.” “At present, growth rates exceed five percent,” notes Michael Sterk, Member of the Board at IMPERIAL Shanghai. “In IMPERIAL we have found an expert logistics partner who can support us in our domestic and international growth,” boasts Zheng Chen, Vice General Manager at Shanghai Runda Medical Technology Co., Ltd.  When entering this field of business, IMPERIAL Shanghai can draw upon the expertise of its parent company, IMPERIAL Holdings Ltd., in South Africa. Its subsidiary, IMPERIAL Health Sciences (IHS), is one of Africa’s leading supply chain vendors for pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare. IHS specialises in multi-channel solutions to achieve reliability in the provision of vital medicaments and in the distribution of healthcare products.