Working in partnership with our customers, PFE was trusted to perform the vital role of supplying essential PPE to the frontline – including NHS hospitals – throughout the Coronavirus crisis.
The global demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) during the Coronavirus pandemic put huge pressure on the NHS to ensure a reliable supply from China. Throughout April and May 2020 the PFE team delivered significant quantities of PPE for NHS services including hospitals as well as Councils, the Police, mortuaries and funeral homes across the UK.
The deliveries required regular charter flights, plus additional volumes on commercial flights. In total over 22,000 cartons containing millions of items have been supplied including:
- 250,000 face shields every week to NHS England
- 300,000 goggles to NHS Scotland
- 500,000 goggles to the Police
- 300,000 goggles to NHS Wales
- 300,000 face shields to NHS Wales
- Over 1 million PPE items for Queens Hospital Trust
For NHS Wales alone, PFE arranged the delivery of 300,000 goggles and 300,000 shields, equating to 258 pallets in total. It required a huge team effort from PFE’s Air Freight, Transport and Warehouse teams to meet the demand and deliver to the required timeline. Thanks to everyone’s hard work PFE was able to bring in cargo from China and deliver it to 4 NHS Wales sites over the duration of only 5 days.
- Goods collected from factory in Shanghai on Friday 22nd May
- Goods loaded on board Boeing 777-300ER in bulk cargo hold, cabin (full to the brim)
- Flight departed Friday 22nd May evening
- Flight landed at London Heathrow on Saturday 23rd May
- PFE collected 6 full trailers Sunday 24th May
- PFE prepared cartons and pallets to NHS specifications Monday 25th May
- Deliveries to over 4 NHS Wales sites staggered over 26th – 29th May (Monday 25th was a bank holiday)
“When working on this project, we all felt as though we were contributing to the national effort so we pulled out all the stops” said Jacob Collins, Air Freight operations for PFE. “PFE were trusted to manage the entire end-to-end supply chain; controlling the process every step of the way. This included the factory collections in China, origin customs and inspections, load of cargo onto the flights, destination customs, warehousing and distribution to the NHS sites in the UK.”
While the impact of Coronavirus is now subsiding in the UK, PFE will continue to deliver PPE to the services that need it, with millions of items due to fly throughout June and July.
