Many pharmaceutical companies have steadily accumulated logistics partners as each product launch, market entry or acquisition added another provider into the mix. On paper, this multi-vendor model promised competition on price and reduced dependence on any single supplier. In practice, it often produced something else entirely: supplier sprawl.
Instead of more control, companies find themselves overseeing tangled networks of third-party logistics providers, freight forwarders and specialist carriers, all operating under different contracts, commercial terms and quality regimes. What once felt like prudent diversification now risks undermining transparency, governance and resilience.
How pharma ended up with so many partners
Large manufacturers with strong local footprints often allowed country teams to choose their own logistics partners, while procurement reinforced the pattern by favouring multi-vendor set ups to keep competition on price and avoid dependency. Each move made sense in isolation, but together they have created sprawling global networks that are increasingly difficult to coordinate and control.
The impact of this dynamic comes into sharp focus in the following anonymised example.
An illustration of the problem
After a major portfolio acquisition, a large European generics and biosimilars manufacturer inherited the previous owner’s logistics network and ended up with dozens of different warehousing and transport partners across Europe and Asia. The procurement department was left trying to coordinate an extremely complex web of activities and stakeholders. Each order triggered multiple email chains with warehouses, carriers and receiving sites, with further back and forth every time plans shifted.
“The firm suddenly had dozens of logistics partners across Europe and a long tail of providers moving product from Asia,” explains Koen Lieffering, Regional Head of Key Accounts Europe, Cencora, who helped the manufacturer to find a solution to their supplier sprawl. “In one region alone, there were around 30 suppliers for storage and distribution and more than 20 just for inbound air freight, which made it almost impossible for procurement, finance and quality to get a clear, end to end view of the supply chain.”
In addition, in GDP-regulated environments, every additional vendor increases the quality workload. Each provider must be qualified, audited and monitored, often in several countries, so spreading activity across many logistics partners forces QA teams to repeat very similar audits again and again.
To simplify the landscape, Cencora proposed an integrated set up under one ‘hub-and-spokes’ group umbrella. Products were imported to the EU by World Courier, a Cencora company, and stored in Cencora’s 3PL warehouse hub in the Netherlands. World Courier then handled transport to the ‘spokes’ (other Cencora 3PL locations across Europe), as well as the last mile.
With Cencora as the main operational and quality interface, internal teams now had one counterpart managing both storage and distribution, rather than dozens of separate providers. The shift delivered direct savings on transport through consolidated volumes and stronger buying power, while cutting vendor management, reducing day to day coordination, and easing QA and audit workloads. For procurement, it created a clearer business case that combined straightforward cost reductions with quantifiable indirect benefits.
How does this help with costs?
Cost is often the main reason procurement teams maintain a wide pool of logistics partners, but deeper relationships with fewer providers can deliver more value than marginal unit price reductions across many vendors. “When customers consolidate more volume with us, we can optimise our costs through better consolidation and routing,” explains Karan Suri, Commercial Strategy & Revenue Growth at World Courier. “It becomes a win-win: we handle more units more efficiently, and in return we can offer a better price overall.”
This approach also supports simpler, more transparent pricing. Instead of juggling separate tariffs in each country, global and regional customers can move towards harmonised pricing across markets, with consistent rates and rules. For procurement teams, this makes budgeting, comparison and negotiation far easier, and clarifies the total value of working with one integrated partner rather than a patchwork of local providers.
What about transparency, data, and tracking emissions?
Supplier sprawl also makes it harder to tackle newer priorities such as Scope 3 emissions. For large, listed companies, most emissions sit in the extended supply chain, so credible reporting depends on accurate primary data from across the logistics ecosystem.
“For large pharma companies, 80-90% of emissions sit in the supply chain,” says Markas Ąžuolas, Environmental Sustainability Manager at World Courier. “The real challenge is getting accurate data when you are dealing with thousands of vendors and third-party logistics partners around the world.”
Working with fewer, more integrated partners creates clearer data flows, more consistent reporting and less reliance on generic averages or estimates.
Reframing risk and moving from sprawl to strategic simplicity
More vendors no longer equal less risk; they often mean higher hidden costs, greater complexity and more blind spots. When a single logistics partner provides multiple sites, backup options and broad regional coverage, resilience is built into the network rather than into a long supplier list.
With a global network covering North and South America, Europe, and Asia, Cencora brings together specialist warehousing, distribution, transport and consulting businesses under one umbrella, so pharma companies can work with a single strategic partner instead of a patchwork of local providers. The goal is to simplify complex, regulated supply chains through one coordinated relationship, with shared quality oversight, harmonised pricing and a unified view of performance and risk.
