What's New? UPS has completed the acquisition of healthcare cold-chain logistics providers Frigo-Trans and BPL.
Why It Matters: UPS Healthcare customers now have access to enhanced end-to-end temperature-controlled and time-critical transportation solutions, ensuring their needs are met as demand from pharma and biotech industries continues to grow across Europe.
UPS announced the successful acquisition of Frigo-Trans and its sister company BPL, key European healthcare cold-chain logistics providers known for their industry-leading expertise in temperature-controlled and time-critical transportation solutions.
This move empowers UPS Healthcare to better serve the growing demand from pharmaceutical and biotech companies for safe, efficient, and precise temperature-controlled logistics. Frigo-Trans' capabilities include cryopreservation (-196°C) to ambient (+15° to +25°C) storage, combined with a Pan-European cold-chain transportation network. BPL complements these strengths with its time-critical freight forwarding solutions specialized for healthcare customers.
Why This Matters for Healthcare Customers
The acquisitions align with UPS Healthcare's broader mission to provide unmatched end-to-end logistics for temperature-sensitive healthcare products, including biologics, specialty pharmaceuticals, and personalized medicine. With 80% of pharmaceutical products in Europe requiring temperature-controlled transportation, investments like these ensure UPS Healthcare remains at the forefront of innovation in the $82 billion complex healthcare logistics market.
Additionally, Frigo-Trans' presence in Germany—the world's fourth-largest healthcare manufacturing market—strengthens UPS's foothold and enhances its support for critical intra-Germany operations.
What This Means for the Future
UPS has consistently aimed to reshape healthcare logistics, exemplified by previous acquisitions of companies like Bomi and MNX. These investments are part of UPS's strategy to double healthcare revenue from $10 billion in 2023 to $20 billion by 2026, positioning UPS as the world's top provider of complex healthcare logistics.
"Healthcare customers increasingly demand precision, reliability, and adaptability—qualities that are critical for the future of biologics and personalized medicine. The Frigo-Trans and BPL acquisitions allow us to offer unmatched service across Europe, making logistics a competitive advantage for our pharma partners," says John Bolla, President, UPS Healthcare.
To further expand its capabilities across Europe, UPS recently expanded its temperature-controlled fleet in France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Hungary. These efforts will continue to support growing demand while ensuring fast, reliable, and secure transportation for critical healthcare shipments.
To learn more about this announcement and how UPS Healthcare can meet your logistics needs, by contacting us today.
About UPS Healthcare
UPS Healthcare delivers unparalleled healthcare logistics expertise to its customers around the world. UPS Healthcare has 17 million square feet of cGMP and GDP-compliant healthcare distribution space globally. Services include inventory management, cold chain packaging and shipping, storage and fulfillment of medical devices and lab and clinical trial logistics. UPS Healthcare's global infrastructure, UPS® Premier visibility service, track and trace technology and global quality system are well-suited to meet today's complex logistics demands for the pharmaceutical, medical device and laboratory diagnostic industries.
About UPS
UPS (NYSE: UPS) is one of the world’s largest companies, with 2023 revenue of $91.0 billion, and provides a broad range of integrated logistics solutions for customers in more than 200 countries and territories. Focused on its purpose statement, "Moving our world forward by delivering what matters," the company's approximately 500,000 employees embrace a strategy that is simply stated and powerfully executed: Customer First. People Led. Innovation Driven. UPS is committed to reducing its impact on the environment and supporting the communities we serve around the world. UPS also takes an unwavering stance in support of diversity, equity and inclusion. More information can be found at ups.com, about.ups.com and investors.ups.com.
About Frigo-Trans
Frigo-Trans provides an end-to-end warehouse and transportation solution for pharmaceutical and biotech customers. Frigo-Trans does this by utilizing best-in-class distribution facilities and a pharmacy-focused, Pan-European, cold-chain transportation network. Other value-added services include, but are not limited to, packaging, handling and inventory management. Headquartered in Fußgönheim, Germany, Frigo-Trans's network expands across all countries in Europe.
About BPL
BPL offers individual transport management for GDP-compliant shipping of time-critical and temperature-sensitive products. BPL manages a high-quality network of air and ocean freight carriers along with customs clearance to meet the complex, cross border needs of customers. BPL prioritizes serving biopharma customers with special temperature, quality and speed requirements. BPL is headquartered in Duesseldorf, Germany.
