Frontier Scientific Solutions, a temperature-controlled storage and transportation company serving the life sciences industry, announced its plans to develop new state-of-the-art facilities at Wilmington International Airport (ILM) and Shannon Airport (SNN) in County Clare, Ireland.

The cGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practices) projects, including a 500,000-square-foot facility at ILM’s business park and an initial 70,000-square-foot facility at SNN, are supported by a $1.5 billion commitment from GID, a real estate investor, owner, operator and developer. 

The initial facility is expected to create more than 100 jobs. The company is also planning additional phases at ILM, which could add up to 500 local jobs as the company expands its services in the life sciences, officials said a news conference Wednesday.

The new facilities along with a direct flight between the two airports will help Frontier Scientific become a disruptor in the life sciences supply chain, said Frontier’s CEO Steve Uebele. The existing pharmaceutical supply chain involves an array of touchpoints, including the transfer from facilities to trucks and planes, all while keeping products under controlled temperatures. In 2023 alone, Uebele said, the industry lost $35 billion due to drug spoilage because of temperature excursions.

Building Frontier Scientific’s warehousing facility alongside an ILM runway means more efficiency in product transfers.

“Simply put, they come in like a truck, right out into our facilities,” Uebele said, “and we've just cut out all that time, potential waste, loss of product, and nobody does it today like this.”

The new facilities and connecting flight "will enable companies in life sciences to transport time and temperature-sensitive materials in significantly shorter timeframes, with fewer touchpoints, less risk, while operating more sustainably," according to a news release from the company.

The ILM facility broke ground earlier this year and is expected to be up and running by August, Uebele said. Frontier Scientific expects to begin upfitting an existing 70,000-square-foot building at SNN in the coming weeks with another 120,000-square-foot building planned as a second phase.

Investing in the facility is a strategic move for Boston-based GID, said the company's CEO Gregory Bates.

“Today, we have 26 million square feet of industrial, which is about $4 billion of total value," Bates said Wednesday. "This billion-and-a-half commitment increases our exposure to this space by nearly 40%, so this is one of the more strategic initiatives the company has embarked on recently. I'm confident that our partnership with Frontier is going to be an economic win for the state of North Carolina. I think it's going to do wonderful things for the community here in Wilmington.”

​The first flight between Wilmington and Shannon will begin during the second week of January, Uebele said, with products being trucked from the airport to Frontier Scientific’s existing 60,000-square-foot warehouse on North 23rd Street. Once the ILM facility opens, flights will operate daily.

Ireland is a "great place to do business," especially for pharmaceutical companies, said Ray O'Driscoll, chief operating officer of the Shannon Airport Group. The company is currently home to more than 100 pharmaceutical companies, including nine of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies with the largest revenue and assets.

"The fact that Shannon is located on the West Coast, in between the cities of Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Cork – where all these pharmaceutical companies are based – make (it) the ideal location for this new pharma lane between Ireland, Europe and into Wilmington," O'Driscoll said.

Earlier this year, Frontier's existing facility secured a Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) designation to help facilitate the import of goods from customers in foreign countries. Advantages of an FTZ include reducing duties, or import taxes, on imported materials when they come into the port and minimizing administrative roadblocks in the import process.

 Bringing a distribution gateway into Wilmington will help bring new jobs and revenue into the area.

“Today, a lot of the distribution is going outside North Carolina, so it might be made here, but it goes outside logistically,” he said. “So we're losing the revenue. We're losing the jobs that we can create by the logistics network here in North Carolina.”

Uebele said he also sees the potential for future growth in this distribution model as the pharmaceutical industry evolves.

“All the industry now is starting to move towards specialized medicines,” Uebele said. “There's a lot of stringent controls on specialized medicines and temperatures that they have to stay in, and, based on the growth of that industry, this is the way of the future.”