The requirement:

With an outbreak of the Omicron strand in Australia, and the pressure on the state health systems for testing, there was an urgent demand for TGA approved POC Rapid Antigen Tests for immediate distribution across the country.

This required an urgent solution to source manufacture, allocation, import and delivery to Australia.

The Challenge:

Given the timing was leading into the Northern Hemisphere winter, the majority of factories globally had locked in manufacturing schedules. 

Governments and industry, however, were committed to sourcing an ongoing scheduled supply to ensure they could air freight weekly into the region.

We were able to identify a small number of factories globally that were TGA approved for importing and distribution into Australia.

From this list we then needed to further select only those with high sensitivity testing and also evidence they were producing medical equipment prior to the pandemic.

Air freight from Asia had spiked again due to the demand for PPE as a result of the new Omicron outbreak in Australia, which caught Australia by surprise.  

In summary, the key challenge was securing a factory producing high sensitivity testing kits that was on the TGA list in Australia, therefore allowing efficient importation of these devices via air freight to address the urgency of the situation.

SOLUTION:

We used our relationships with Asian governments to lock in an allocation with a factory already producing POC high sensitivity tests and were able to have vetted one factory 3rd party testing as this factory had already received notice their application approval was imminent with the TGA in Australia.

Based on this, we then requested they confirmed an allocation of production set aside at their factory as per the TGA requirement.

We worked immediately on ensuring draft documents summited to customs for checking would clear customs.

We also ensured that we would be accurate in managing air freight logistics and costing in advance. This was critical as even though this process would be similar to medical masks, the product was more sensitive therefore creating stricter handling requirements right through to road transport and warehousing.

This approach demonstrated our foresight to having the shipment ready for when TGA approval was granted for importing and distribution.

Once TGA was approved we could action delivery into Australia within days.
Due to the commercial airlines time delays during this period, including clearing customs in Australia taking up to 1 week, our earlier work spent securing space-chartered flights enabled us to ensure flight schedules and times were locked. This was inclusive of being able to control pre-clearing to ensure we could collect immediately from the airport.


CONCLUSION:

✔ We were assigned and authorised by the factory with the sponsor to be their distributor for these highly sensitive POC rapids tests

✔ We were able to lock chartered flights instantly and cleared costings for export and preclearance before flight arrivals in Australia.

✔ We were the 1st company in Australia to receive these POC highly sensitive rapid tests 

✔ We maintained complete control of the delivery process collecting from Australian airports using our own trucks ready for distribution for all pre orders

✔ We delivered to The Australian Defence Force within 72 hours from order for urgent delivery to HMS Adelaide to meet urgent departure for deployment to the Tonga Tsunami relief disaster

✔ We were able to dispatch all orders within 24 hours Australia wide