In 2020, i+solutions was extremely proud to be selected by the Global Fund as Procurement Services Agent for Covid-related PPE as part of the Fund’s COVID-19 Response Mechanism (C19RM). Since getting started in December 2020, i+solutions has already processed a total of 30 requisitions for among other 210 million gloves and 76 million masks. Sourcing Covid-PPE has proved challenging, especially securing production capacity with suppliers, who are already serving the high global demand for PPE.
Despite these challenges, i+solutions has already delivered its first shipment under the C19RM: a consignment of about 1 million masks to the Philippines, February 11th. The shipment marks the first of many PPE deliveries scheduled to be made to around 20 countries before the end of June 2021.
As mentioned above, the sourcing and delivery of PPE in the current market has many challenges including scarcity of products, limited supplier capacity, lockdowns globally affecting the availability of flights and opening of ports, volatility of product prices, fluctuating logistics rates and lack of containers to ship products. Indeed, some countries have ordered dozens of containers, making it hard for suppliers to deliver all at once. i+solutions has therefore selected a range of origin warehouses – mostly in China – which can be used for temporary storage, since suppliers do not have enough in-house storage capacity.
i+solutions is very proud to be part of this global effort to source and deliver COVID-PPE and together with its trusted Logistic Service Providers Bolloré, Logenix and Maersk will ensure the products are delivered on-time, in full and in good condition.
