The world is showing positive signs of the COVID-19 vaccine development as more manufacturers announce high efficacy of vaccines and apply for marketing authorization. Along with that, a niche market is also opened and forecast to thrive in the near future, which is the market for producing vaccine storage freezers.
After one year in the world coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for vaccines is expected to increase ever-increasing. Over the past few days, freezer orders have begun pouring into Froilabo’s headquarters in Meyzieu, France – the only freezer supplier in France currently able to store vaccines at -86 degrees Celsius.
Mr. Matthieu Delastre, of the Froilabo Design Department, said: “This is the temperature at which frost is very easy. The difficult thing is that we really have to ensure a near-perfect tightness to avoid frost on the door seals or “It’s like when we’re in Antarctica, the less leaks, the less water is directly frozen. It’s a huge challenge.”
In Froilabo, domestic orders account for 40-50%, the rest are in Asia, America and Europe.
A 700l freezer costs about 12,000 euros, equivalent to 330 million dong. The largest size can be up to 1,000l, capable of storing about 290,000 doses of vaccine.
By the time vaccine manufacturers released the positive news, freezer demand began to gradually increase to store biological samples, if needed, for decades. Froilabo has been formulating plans to increase production capacity over the past few months and will continue to push through in the coming months. Before mass orders, the company said it would have to triple its production capacity in 2021.