‘Helping the world’: Local company to play key role in vaccine transportation, storage

CHARLOTTE — A local company will play a major role in the transportation and storage of COVID-19 vaccines that require ultracold temperatures. Pfizer’s vaccine requires storage of -70 degrees Celsius.

Thermo King, a company of Davidson-based Trane Technologies, is a leader in refrigerated transport and is offering products and their services to make sure the vaccine gets where it needs to be.

“We all have to work together in these challenging times,” said Dave Regnery, president of Trane Technologies. “This is about helping the world.”

Regnery said he and Trane Technologies are ready for the task.

Their company, Thermo King, can assist COVID-19 vaccine shippers. The company produces storage solutions that can maintain that ultracold - 70 degrees Celsius temperature for long periods of time.

“This is cold, really cold,” Regnery said. “You tend to, at these temperatures, measure frostbite for exposed skin in seconds, not minutes.”

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This is a potentially game-changing option for rural and underserved communities without access to a hospital with large storage capabilities. Thermo King’s storage solution is also a huge benefit for the transport process, given that many times temperature-controlled health care products are damaged while en route to their destination.

Thermo King’s expertise is “cold chain,” which is managing the temperature of frozen products.

“We need to make sure that as we talk about that cold chain that all of those handoffs happen seamlessly so we don’t violate any of the integrity of all of the vaccines,” Regnery said.

The company said it is thrilled that their product can play a role in this life-changing development.

“We are super excited that the vaccine is rolling out,” Regnery said. “We are looking at this from a perspective of, ‘How can we help get this vaccine distributed as fast as possible to as many people as possible to really help save lives?’”

The Super-Freezer product that Thermo King offers that is capable of reaching this low temperature has been on the market for 20 years but was originally developed for sushi.

Thermo King worked with pharma companies to tweak the design and make it usable for vaccines.

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Cox Media Group