For this year’s Coastal Entrepreneur of the Year, the journey started, as many entrepreneurial journeys do, with an important question.
“How do we make sure life-saving therapies get to the people who need them without delay, without compromise?”
Frontier Scientific Solutions, the 2025 Coastal Entrepreneur of the Year, wanted to come up with an answer.
“That one question sparked a mission that spans time zones, temperature zones and regulatory zones most of us didn’t know existed. They’re not building an app, they’re building an infrastructure, a 530,000-square-foot facility right here in Wilmington and another at an international airport in Ireland,” said Morris Nguyen, co-founder and CEO of AI health care company Predicate Healthcare Performance Group (HPG), last year’s Coastal Entrepreneur of the Year.
Nguyen made the remarks as he bestowed the Coastal Entrepreneur of the Year award upon Frontier Scientific Solutions during the Coastal Entrepreneur Awards (CEA) celebration held at the University of North Carolina Wilmington on May 21.
The Coastal Entrepreneur of the Year is awarded a wooden surfboard engraved with each year’s winner, which Frontier Scientific Solutions CEO Steve Uebele accepted during the ceremony.
Uebele’s company, a temperature-controlled storage and transportation firm serving the life sciences industry, in November announced plans to develop state-of-the-art facilities at Wilmington International Airport and Shannon Airport in County Clare, Ireland.
The projects, including the more than 500,000-square-foot facility at ILM’s business park and an initial 70,000-square-foot facility at Shannon Airport, are supported by a $1.5 billion commitment from real estate firm GID.
Frontier Scientific Solutions got its start in the pharmaceutical logistics space after Uebele discovered a problem that needed solving.
“I started Frontier Scientific Solutions to solve critical gaps I saw in the pharmaceutical supply chain – especially in temperature-controlled logistics, regulatory inefficiencies and fragmented international distribution,” Uebele said. “The mission was clear: build a purpose-driven platform that prioritizes quality, compliance and speed to ensure life-saving therapies reach patients without compromise.”
The pharmaceutical supply chain consists of all the processes – such as manufacturing, distributing and dispensing – required to deliver medications to patients. The supply chain is also comprised of multiple stakeholders, including regulatory agencies, wholesalers, health care providers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and patients.
According to Uebele, Frontier Scientific Solutions is a pharmaceutical logistics company that focuses on temperature-controlled storage, handling that is Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) compliant and global transportation of clinical and commercial products. He noted that the company also provides end-to-end support for life sciences companies and combines infrastructure, regulatory oversight and technology to manage complex supply chains with precision and reliability.
Uebele additionally emphasized that the company goes a step further than merely moving products; he said that it protects the products’ integrity across the full supply chain and listed several things he believes set Frontier Scientific Solutions apart. Among these are specialized infrastructure, regulatory expertise, direct tarmac access for time-sensitive shipments, full-use facilities that are Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ)-bonded, a scalable workforce and technology platform and a customs border patrol and TSA screening center within the facility.
An FTZ zone doesn’t have to follow normal customs regulations since it’s located within a geographical area that isn’t considered U.S. customs territory. This designated area allows companies to minimize or eliminate duties and excise taxes on imported goods. However, FTZ-bonded facilities differ from customs-bonded facilities in that customs-bonded facilities are regulated by customs authorities and go through customs procedures; they’re considered part of U.S. customs territory.
And with customs-bonded facilities, goods can be stored, manipulated or manufactured without duties for up to five years. Another difference between the two types of facilities, though, is that companies can store goods in an FTZ-bonded warehouse for an unlimited period. With customs-bonded warehouses, however, imported goods have a five-year storage limit.
And as for milestones, Frontier Scientific Solutions has accomplished a great deal since its inception. This includes designing two major facilities in North Carolina and Ireland, building a specialized logistics and regulatory team, partnering with key stakeholders across the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and government spaces and investing in integrated quality systems and cold chain infrastructure, according to Uebele.
The company’s slate for 2025 includes launching facilities in both Wilmington and Shannon, Ireland, hiring more than 100 specialized employees, rolling out advanced tech platforms and expanding internationally into markets in Europe, the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, Uebele said.
“Our long-term goal,” he said, “is to become the global standard for compliant, temperature-controlled pharmaceutical logistics.”
Uebele said at May’s CEA awards ceremony that building Frontier Scientific Solutions required believing in the mission.
“We went through so many hard times to try to figure this out. This team came together and never wavered ... We stuck to the mission. Purpose is what it takes. If you don’t have purpose, you just don’t have that mission, and everybody in this organization and our company has so much purpose,” he said.
In addition to Coastal Entrepreneur of the Year, the CEA celebration at UNCW’s Burney Center honored 11 category winners, including Frontier Scientific Solutions in the biotech category.
The awards are a collaboration between the Greater Wilmington Business Journal and UNCW’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The following are all of this year’s category winners:
Biotech: Frontier Scientific Solutions
Biotech: Sandbar Oyster Co.
Emerging Company: FloorTress
Emerging Company: Synaptigen
Manufacturing + Distribution: Infinite Structures
Minority/Woman-Owned Business: Maritime Maids
Nonprofit: Welcome Home Angel
Professional Services: Capone & Associates
Retail + Hospitality: Salt & Charm
Technology: Boreas Monitoring Solutions
Technology: Lumos Technologies Inc.
