The ‘cold millionaires’: the most unexpected side effect of the new weight-loss drugs

Ever since Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro became the talk of the town, there has been a great deal of emphasis on how they have transformed the healthcare sector, how they have improved the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people in Spain, and how they have revolutionised the treatment of diseases that, until now, were very difficult to combat. But there is one crucial aspect that is often overlooked: their transport.

Before reaching a pharmacy, many of these medicines must travel thousands of kilometres whilst remaining within specific temperature conditions. It is not enough simply to move them from one place to another: they must be stored, packaged, monitored and transported without any incident at an airport, a customs post or a change of vehicle jeopardising a product that may be worth thousands of euros and on which, moreover, a patient’s well-being depends. To put this into context, according to the European Medicines Agency, the widely publicised Ozempic must be kept, at all times, between 2 and 8 ºC and must never be frozen.

The spectacular growth in new treatments for diabetes and obesity has thus put pressure on an industry far less well-known than the pharmaceutical sector: temperature-controlled logistics. And the phenomenon extends far beyond GLP-1s. Biologics, vaccines, cancer therapies, personalised medicine and cell and gene therapies are transforming the traditional cold chain into an increasingly strategic infrastructure.

The figures give an idea of the scale of the transformation. An IQVIA analysis of medicines requiring refrigeration or freezing estimated that 37 per cent of new drugs launched between 2013 and 2017 required a cold chain. By 2018–2022, this figure had risen to 45 per cent, and for launches in the 2023–2027 period, the proportion is around half. In just a few years, what was once the exception is set to become the norm.