PM Modi pushes refrigerated vaccine transport boxes tie up with Luxembourg company in Gujarat

According to official sources based in Delhi and Ahmedabad, Luxembourg firm B Medical Systems is sending a high-level team to Gujarat next week to set up a vaccine cold chain including solar vaccine refrigerators, freezers and transport boxes.

Updated on: Nov 28, 2020, 18:44:15 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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With a vaccine against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) round the corner, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken up the offer of his counterpart in Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, for setting up of a specialised refrigerated vaccine transportation plant in Gujarat to ensure last mile drug delivery to villages all over the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken up the offer of Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel for setting up of a specialized refrigerated vaccine transportation plant in Gujarat. (HT Photo)

According to official sources based in Delhi and Ahmedabad, Luxembourg firm B Medical Systems is sending a high-level team to Gujarat next week to set up a vaccine cold chain including solar vaccine refrigerators, freezers and transport boxes. As the setting up of a full-fledged plant will require nearly two years, the company has decided to start by getting only the refrigeration boxes from Luxembourg and source the best content from the domestic market under the “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” programme. The refrigerated transport boxes will be able to deliver vaccine between four degrees Celsius to 20 below zero even though the Luxembourg-based company has the technology to transport vaccine 80 below zero degrees Celsius.

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Santosh Jha, India’s ambassador to the European Union, virtually met CEO and deputy CEO of the company on November 20 to finalise the arrangements with Gujarat. While the refrigerated boxes, powered by solar, kerosene, gas and electricity, are expected to be ready for delivery by March 2021, the B Medical Systems company will set up a full-fledged plant in Gujarat in phase II for not only supplying to Indian requirement but also exporting it to other countries.

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Official sources said the proposal was made by Bettel to PM Modi during the first bilateral summit on November 19. Given the concerns over last-mile delivery of vaccines in India, PM Modi immediately grabbed at the opportunity and the proposal was pushed at both ends with the company establishing contact with Gujarat government.

B Medical Systems is a Luxembourg based pioneer in the medical equipment industry. It was founded in 1979 when the World Health Organization (WHO) approached the mother company Electrolux in Vianden to provide a solution for safely storing and transporting vaccines all over the world. The company is also a world leader in blood bank and plasma storage refrigerators.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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