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Pyeongtaek:
Some of the rooms in Korea Superfreeze Inc’s coldest warehouse are so frigid {that a} cup of heat water thrown into one will instantly flip into snow.
Located 65 km (40 miles) under Seoul and boasting temperatures frostier than an Antarctic winter, the power can be the very best, maybe solely, place in South Korea appropriate for bulk storage of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, says firm CEO Kim Jin-ha.
“As soon as we heard about the Pfizer vaccine, we started getting ready… other options wouldn’t work,” Kim instructed Reuters, including that the warehouse’s use of liquefied pure gasoline (LNG) to maintain temperatures cool trumped electrical energy.
Warehouses which use electrical energy would have problem sustaining the -70 levels Celsius (-94 F) required by the vaccine for storage and carry the danger of the temperature rising throughout an influence blackout, he stated.
The firm, which is backed by Goldman Sachs and SK Holdings Co Ltd, has been in talks with the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency since early November and whereas nothing is but determined, expectations are excessive it’s going to land a contract.
The company has requested Korea Superfreeze to offer plans and value estimates for storing and distributing vaccines, together with how it might deal with a state of affairs the place vaccines can be shipped to 260 completely different places, Kim stated.
South Korea has organized to purchase 20 million doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German associate BioNTech.
The nation additionally has offers for 20 million doses every for the vaccines developed by Moderna Inc and AstraZeneca Plc/Oxford University and for one more four million doses from Johnson & Johnson.
In complete, that might be sufficient to inoculate 34 million individuals in a rustic of 51.eight million and shipments are anticipated to start no later than March.
Kim stated, nevertheless, it was not clear to him if the company would faucet the corporate for vaccines apart from Pfizer’s which have much less onerous chilly storage necessities. Moderna’s vaccine will be saved for as much as six months at -20 C whereas AstraZeneca’s vaccine wants solely regular fridge temperatures.
To accommodate Pfizer’s vaccine, Korea Superfreeze is planning a devoted passageway and elevator so there isn’t a interference from exterior temperatures. Once it confirms it has a contract, it’s going to start building which can take 2-Three months.
The warehouse additionally has 220 closed-circuit cameras that monitor resting cargo around the clock, Kim stated.
He added that South Korea and Japan have been the one international locations with LNG-powered services which might supply storage at these temperatures and that the warehouses in Japan have been a lot smaller and extra remotely situated as a result of earthquake dangers.
All in all, the Korea Superfreeze rooms able to storing items at -70 C add as much as 1,600 sq. metres (17,222 sq. toes). But simply how a lot of that shall be wanted stays unclear as the corporate has not but ascertained how massive the containers carrying the vaccines shall be and the way a lot shall be shipped to South Korea at a time.
Kim stated, nevertheless, that some common prospects of the storage services may need to be inconvenienced.
“For the tuna and other goods that are being kept here at -60 degrees, we’re going to have to ask their permission, compensate them for it and clear them out of here.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)
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