16th Annual Cold Chain Global Forum, Philadelphia, 2018

Two old landing pages on the former Cold Chain Global Forum website, /landing/eho and /landing/take-a-closer-look-at-the-16th-ccgf, were tied to the 16th edition by the sources below. This page is the single record for that edition.

Verified facts

• The 16th Annual Cold Chain Global Forum was held from 24 to 27 September 2018 at the Philadelphia Convention Center in Philadelphia. [1][2]
• Cold Chain Technologies said, on 21 September 2018, that it was a premier sponsor of the 16th edition. [2]
• Thirdwayv Inc. published a post saying it would demonstrate its technology portfolio at the forum in Philadelphia from 24 to 27 September 2018 and invited visitors to its booth. The post did not state a sponsorship level. [3]
• Almac Group announced that Cold Chain Technologies and Almac Clinical Services had been named winners of Global Forum Excellence Awards in the categories “Best Innovative Supply Chain Strategy” and “Best Supplier Collaboration” at the 16th edition. The announcement was published on 13 November 2018. [4]
• A World Pharma Today listing dated 11 May 2018 for a whitepaper on pharma logistics compliance linked to a page on the forum’s own website. The link carried a tracking code beginning “16gf”. The related bibliographic note on the Pharma Logistics Compliance report gives what is known about that report. [5]

See also the record for Thirdwayv at the 2018 forum.

Additional detail from the sources

• The events listing gave the dates as “Sep 24 - Sep 27 2018” and the venue as the Philadelphia Convention Center. Its posting stamp read “2018-24-09”, which can only mean 24 September, the opening day of the event. [1]
• Cold Chain Technologies published its post three days before the event opened, on 21 September 2018, and gave a booth number in it. The number is not repeated here because it applied only to that event. [2]
• Thirdwayv’s post gave its booth number as 513 and invited visitors to discuss environmental sensing and tracking in cold chain and industrial automation. [3]
• The winners announcement was published on 13 November 2018, more than six weeks after the event closed. It was an announcement by Almac Group, not by the organizer. [4]
• The World Pharma Today listing was dated 11 May 2018, more than four months before the event. The tracking code in its link read “16gf_worldpharmatoday_eb”. [5]

Where this edition sits in the series

Other records in this archive cover the earlier editions. The 13th Annual forum was held on 5 to 9 October 2015 in Boston, the 14th on 26 to 30 September 2016 in Boston, the 15th on 25 to 29 September 2017 in Chicago, and the 16th on 24 to 27 September 2018 in Philadelphia. The 2018 edition is the last one these records cover. Compared with earlier years, far less agenda detail is publicly documented for 2018: no brochure, speaker list or organizer sponsor list was found, so the record rests on company announcements.

Source material and scope

What exists: an events listing that gives dates and venue, one sponsor’s own announcement, one exhibitor’s own announcement, a winners announcement published by one of the awarded companies, and a publisher listing for a whitepaper promoted for this edition.

What is missing: the original /landing/eho and 16th-edition landing pages (no archived copy was found, so their content is unknown), the 2018 agenda, the speaker list, the full sponsor and exhibitor list, and any announcement from the organizer about the awards. Announcements by companies describe their own participation and are not independent confirmation of their role. Search summaries that named individual 2018 speakers were not checked against a primary page and are not used here. No attendance figure is given.

How this record connects to other archive pages

The report that the 2018 landing page promoted has its own bibliographic note, and the one company with a page of its own is covered in the Thirdwayv record. The earlier editions are documented in the 2015 programme record, the agenda records for 2016 and 2017 and the Day Two record, which together show how much more was public for those years.

The winners announcement follows the awards covered in the 2016 awards record. All public documents behind this record are listed in the historical resource index, and the archive home links to every record.

Editorial analysis: why these topics still matter

The 2018 sources cover participation and awards but no session content, so this analysis by the Editorial Desk describes nothing that was presented and recommends no company named in the record.

One of the few topics the 2018 sources name is environmental sensing and tracking in the cold chain, which Thirdwayv listed as the subject of its booth conversations. For a buyer today that topic comes down to timing: whether temperature data is read after arrival or during transit. The guide on real-time versus offline monitoring explains the difference and the coverage gaps of connected devices, and the guide on data logger selection lists what a monitoring specification should state before a device is chosen.

The awards named in the announcement, “Best Innovative Supply Chain Strategy” and “Best Supplier Collaboration”, were announced for Cold Chain Technologies and Almac Clinical Services. The second name points to clinical work, and clinical supply is one setting where several parties handle the same shipment, which makes the data hand-off and escalation steps important. The guide on clinical trial kit shipping lays out a workflow from kit components through site receipt, temperature data review and return. The announcement text available gives category names only, so no claim is made here about what the winning work involved.

Editorial reconstruction note

This page was prepared by the Cold Chain Practice Editorial Desk from the public sources listed above. DeltaSpark and Cold Chain Practice are not affiliated with IQPC or the organizers of the former event. There is no registration and no current event. Companies named here are historical references and are not partners or endorsers of this site.