• Two flights of repurposed SWISS passenger airplanes, an Airbus A340 and a Boeing 777, brought 10 million medical masks and emergency room equipment from Shanghai to Switzerland. One more flight is planned for early May.
•  “Wild East”: The price of polypropylene non-woven, the raw material of masks, has been multiplied by 20 since January. Mask prices have been multiplied by 5. Fluctuating quality, unreliable supply chains and changing export regulations make professional sourcing inevitable.
• In order to supply the Swiss hospitals quickly and with the best quality material possible, experts of China Integrated and the Swiss Centers China managed the sourcing and logistics process, while quality control is done with SGS and its laboratory in Shanghai.
• This initiative complements the efforts of public authorities, hospitals, and private individuals to ensure the supply of Switzerland with protective medical equipment.

Shanghai (April 23, 2020) – Exceptional times call for exceptional measures: On April 12 and 21, two repurposed SWISS passenger airplanes, an Airbus A340 and a Boeing 777, landed in Zurich and Geneva and brought much needed medical masks and emergency room equipment from China. In early May, a third flight is planned to bring more goods. “With these three flights, we transport over 12 million medical masks of the types IIR and II, emergency room equipment as well as gowns and gloves for hospitals in Switzerland. We work on continuing to transport medical supplies on weekly basis in collaboration with SWISS,” reports Nicolas Musy, Delegate of the Board of Swiss Centers in China (SCC), a non-profit organization that lowers the market entry barriers into Asia for Swiss companies.

The SWISS planes were specifically prepared to transport the important goods. Mr. Lorenzo Stoll, Head of Western Switzerland at SWISS: “In the Boeing 777, where usually 340 passengers travel, 215m³ of material was stored in the cargo hold, the passenger cabin and in the overhead luggage space. It was the first SWISS cargo flight from Shanghai to Geneva.”

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