Escort Cold Chain Solutions SA (ECCS), the global supplier of temperature and humidity data loggers for the cold chain industry, is to operate under a new name – SWITRACE SA – after acquiring Viemme SRL, the development and manufacturing division of FAPS Engineering.
Following the acquisition, SWITRACE SA has moved offices to FAPS Engineering’s former headquarters in Mendrisio, in the Swiss canton of Ticino. Dedicated to serving the cold chain for the pharma and biotech sectors, as well as the food sector, SWITRACE will also move the manufacturing of its products from Turkey and China to Switzerland. The company’s Egyptian subsidiary, ECCS Egypt, will continue as part of the business.
Temperature sensitive products must be monitored during transportation to make sure the integrity and good quality of the products are maintained. This is particularly the case for vaccines and other biotech products but also for food products, such as fresh fruit and vegetables. This is the speciality of SWITRACE which exports its full range of temperature monitors globally.
SWITRACE sales and marketing director, Patrick Poulet, said the acquisition would allow the company to have a better control of the quality of its temperature monitors.
He said: “The move was driven by the realisation that manufacturing in southern Switzerland can be highly competitive. We are probably the only single use temperature monitor manufacturer in Europe and offering Swiss quality will make a difference to our customers.”
Expanded activities
SWITRACE SA will also only continue to expand the activities of Viemme SRL as a renowned manufacturer of instrumentation for industries not related to cold chain.
Luca Mercurio, production manager at SWITRACE, said: “We are very excited about joining SWITRACE. We have been manufacturing high-end electronics for over 20 years but we know the cold chain market is one of the fastest in terms of growth, driven by tougher regulations protecting the integrity of drugs and food quality.”
“We are happy to use our manufacturing expertise in this area and look forward to welcoming customers and showing them our state of the art production lines.”
I-PLUG pdf logger
SWITRACE has recently introduced a highly innovative single use temperature monitor, the I-PLUG PDF logger, which can help ensure the cold chain is maintained during product shipments.
Once a shipment reaches its destination, the importer can plug the I-PLUG PDF logger into a PC or tablet to send a report directly to a cloud, making it immediately available to the exporter on their PC or mobile device.
I-PLUG generates a PDF report of the conditions of transportation without the need for software and is available either pre-programmed at no cost or programmable using very light software.
Other products recently launched by SWITRACE include multi use temperature and humidity data loggers for laboratory and warehouse recording, which make real time monitoring possible using GPRS/GSM technology.
Patrick added: “We are already planning to expand our range of monitors particularly in terms of geo-localisation, due to strong concerns from our customers about counterfeiting and product losses”.
“We have now all the tools to continue our development with new ways to assure our customers not only of the right cold chain control, but the guarantee that their products will reach their destination safely and on time”
