Accelerating growth through strategic investment in healthcare warehousing capacity

The healthcare supply chain is under more pressure than ever. Healthcare companies are managing increasingly complex global networks, stricter regulatory requirements, and a rapidly growing portfolio of temperature-sensitive products, including biologics, vaccines, cell and gene therapies, and speciality pharmaceuticals. Maintaining product integrity throughout the supply chain has become both more critical and more challenging.

When it comes to temperature-controlled logistics, in particular, the biggest challenge is ensuring an unbroken cold chain from manufacturing through warehousing, transportation, distribution, and ultimately to the patient. Every handoff introduces risk. Even a brief temperature excursion can compromise product efficacy, create regulatory issues, lead to product loss, and, most importantly, impact patient outcomes.

Here, Eric Ten Kate, Global Sector Leader, Healthcare, at CEVA Logistics, discusses the recent investment by parent company CMA CGM Group in a brand-new 500,000 sq ft greenfield development in Rockingham, Northamptonshire – scheduled to be ready by Q3 2027 – and what CEVA FORPATIENTS at Rockingham will offer the healthcare supply chain as a new, sustainably designed multi-user site in the heart of the UK’s ‘Golden Triangle’.

Addressing healthcare supply chain challenges, globally

In these geopolitically and environmentally challenging times, industry is facing increasing demands for visibility and resilience.

“Customers want real-time monitoring, proactive exception management, and end-to-end traceability across increasingly global and multimodal supply chains,” explains Ten Kate. “Capacity is another important challenge. As demand for temperature-controlled healthcare logistics continues to grow, companies require scalable warehousing infrastructure in strategic locations, close to major transport networks and healthcare markets.”

“The challenge is maintaining integrity throughout the whole supply chain – even the smallest temperature deviation can have an impact on the efficacy of the product,” he continues. “Our objective is to make sure that we deliver the product in a compliant way, in the right condition, at the right time, to the final destination.”

And that’s where the Rockingham site comes in, an investment decision driven by both location and market demand. Rockingham itself sits in the heart of the UK's logistics ‘Golden Triangle’, providing exceptional access to the nation’s population centres, major motorway networks, parcel hubs, airports, and healthcare distribution corridors.

“For healthcare customers, speed, reliability, and network connectivity are critical, particularly when managing temperature-sensitive products, time-critical therapies, and hospital supply chains,” says Ten Kate. “Rockingham provides the ideal location to support these requirements while enabling efficient nationwide distribution.”

“We build a whole visibility around these products to make sure that, no matter where they are, we know what the temperature is [and] if the temperature approaches certain limits, we can proactively interact and intervene and make sure that everything is done to get that product once more in the right condition to the patient,” Ten Kate explains. “If a patient comes to a hospital or an appointment is scheduled, and the product is not available, what good is the appointment then? That’s where we can play an important part from a healthcare logistics perspective.”

A sophisticated logistics infrastructure for advanced therapies

The timing of this investment is equally important. With the healthcare sector experiencing significant growth in personalisation, in biologics, speciality pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and advanced therapies and cell and gene therapies, all these require increasingly sophisticated logistics, precision, and temperature-controlled infrastructure. By investing now, CEVA are positioning themselves ahead of the demand, rather than reacting to market capacity constraints.

“As the market has grown for [these], customers increasingly require end-to-end cold chain solutions that can maintain precise temperature ranges while providing full visibility and regulatory compliance,” Ten Kate notes. “CEVA supports these programmes through specialised warehousing, validated transportation processes, real-time monitoring, and dedicated healthcare control towers.”

“We are proactively creating future-ready healthcare infrastructure that will support customers' evolving requirements for GDP-compliant storage, temperature-controlled operations, end-to-end visibility, and sustainable logistics solutions,” Ten Kate continues. “Ultimately, this investment reinforces CEVA's ambition to be the healthcare logistics partner of choice, helping customers build resilient supply chains that protect product integrity and ensure patients receive the therapies they need, when they need them. The facility has so many great features that investing up front shows that we’re taking healthcare logistics seriously.”

Sustainability and environment: ESG features to measure, optimise, and shift

Sustainability is a fundamental part of the Rockingham development. The facility is not simply being designed to provide additional healthcare warehousing capacity; it is being built to support both customers' supply chain ambitions and their own ESG commitments.

“The healthcare industry is increasingly focused on reducing its environmental footprint while maintaining the highest standards of product integrity, compliance, and patient safety,” explains Ten Kate. “At Rockingham, we are creating a modern facility that supports this objective through a combination of sustainable building design, operational efficiency, and data-driven supply chain management.”

This includes CEVA’s own ‘Measure, Optimise, and Shift’ perspective – an approach based on:

Measure: Visibility is the foundation of sustainability. Customers increasingly want accurate data on carbon emissions, energy consumption, and supply chain performance. Rockingham will support enhanced visibility through modern warehouse technologies, digital monitoring, and integrated supply chain control capabilities, helping customers better understand and measure the environmental impact of their logistics operations.

Optimise: The most sustainable supply chain is often the most efficient one. By locating a large-scale healthcare facility in the UK's ‘Golden Triangle’, customers can optimise inventory positioning, reduce unnecessary transport miles, consolidate distribution activities, and improve vehicle utilisation. In addition, modern temperature-controlled infrastructure is designed to operate more efficiently than older facilities, helping reduce energy consumption while maintaining strict healthcare standards.

Shift: A key element of CEVA's sustainability strategy is helping customers shift toward lower-carbon logistics solutions where appropriate. Through integration of the company’s Contract Logistics, Ground, Air, and Ocean services, it aims to help customers evaluate alternative transport modes, improve network design, and increase the use of more sustainable transport options while maintaining healthcare compliance and product integrity.

“Of course, there will always be healthcare products flown due to the urgency of bringing certain products to the market, but there's a cost pressure there [too], so ocean will become more important as well,” explains Ten Kate.

“The facility is being developed with sustainability at its core,” Ten Kate continues. “It supports energy efficiency, responsible resource use, and reduced environmental impact while delivering the high levels of compliance, temperature control, and operational resilience that healthcare customers require.”

An integrated global network of operational excellence and patient centricity

Healthcare supply chains don't stop at borders, of course. CEVA combines specialised healthcare expertise with a fully integrated global network, enabling the company to support customers consistently across regions.

From inbound raw materials and manufacturing support to temperature-controlled warehousing, inventory management, global transportation, customs management, hospital distribution, and returns processes – CEVA manages the complex logistics ecosystem that supports healthcare manufacturers, hospitals, pharmacies, laboratories, and healthcare providers around the world, its teams working to ensure products move safely, compliantly, and efficiently through every stage of the supply chain.

“For healthcare products, logistics is never simply about moving a shipment from A to B – we are responsible for protecting product integrity throughout the journey, but our work ultimately extends beyond warehouses and transport networks,” Ten Kate states. “Every shipment we handle has a direct connection to a patient waiting for treatment. A vaccine, a surgical device, a cancer therapy, or a homecare treatment only delivers value when it reaches the patient safely and on time.”

“What differentiates CEVA is that we bring all capabilities together through one global healthcare operating model, one quality framework, and one visibility platform,” explains Ten Kate. “Whether supporting a multinational pharmaceutical company, a medical device manufacturer, or a hospital network, our focus remains the same: ensuring critical healthcare products reach patients safely, compliantly, and on time. Every decision we make is guided by one question: how do we best protect the product and ultimately serve the patient who depends on it?”

Healthcare logistics is, after all, ultimately about people.

“At CEVA, we often say that every shipment has a patient at the end of it,” Ten Kate says simply. “We always used to say, it's not a box, it is a patient. If you go to a hospital, you want the product to work – there’s a person behind that. And that's what makes a difference; that's why people within our sector go above and beyond to drive this forward. That simple belief guides every investment we make, every solution we design, and every operation we manage. The future of healthcare will depend on resilient, sustainable, and patient-centric supply chains, and we are proud to be helping build that future.”

About the interviewee

Eric ten Kate, Global Sector Leader – Healthcare, at CEVA Logistics, is a global executive with 20+ years of international leadership experience across healthcare, life sciences, logistics, and supply chain industries, combining commercial strategy, customer development, and operational transformation.

Experienced in leading global healthcare portfolios, strategic account leadership, and international team management, ten Kate has a proven track record in building and scaling international businesses, developing strategic customer partnerships, leading global sector strategies, and delivering profitable growth across multinational organisations. He is also experienced in managing complex healthcare and life sciences portfolios, with deep expertise in customer development, business transformation, supply chain innovation, and global stakeholder management.

About CEVA Logistics

CEVA Logistics, a world leader in third-party logistics, provides global supply chain solutions to connect people, products and providers all around the world. Headquartered in Marseille, France, CEVA Logistics offers a broad range of end-to-end, customized solutions in contract logistics and air, ocean, ground and finished vehicle transport in more than 170 countries worldwide thanks to its approximately 110,000 employees at more than 1,700 facilities. With 2025 revenue of US$18.3 billion, CEVA Logistics is part of the CMA CGM Group, a global player in sea, land, air and logistics solutions. To learn more about CEVA’s healthcare capabilities and its new site in Rockingham, UK, please scan the QR code.