Transporting 50 kg frozen sample of intermediate to India

Dear friends,
Nice to be back after quite some time. I am at the helm of affairs in Cote D'Ivoire for a natural sweetener project. Just started the project here. I would like to send 50 kg sample of intermediate to India under frozen condition(preferably around -10 deg C). Does any air freight agent like DHL or UPS has this facility? Saw somewhere about dry ice boxes being available? Considering that transportation may take 4-5 days will it be a good option? Suggestions welcome !

Once again it's nice to be back here !

A Sankara Narayanan

Dear Sankara Narayanan,

So nice to hear from you again. back.

And still the same hairstyle.

Haven't seen any current posters from Cote D'Ivoire unfortunately.

3-5 days ? You are a brave man. Very lengthy IMEX if the material is sensitive to temperature. Will surely be problematic at the (numerous?) delay points.

No idea about official options, seem probable to exist (at a "price"). IMEX people usually do (smaller) frozen samples themselves (assuming availability of materials of course). And they often get it badly wrong. One method is to base preservative amount on calculated time then (double) it. But the problem gets increasingly worse with things like time / quantity and flight manouevres.

For pre-frozen seafood samples, the usual is dry ice slabs / styrofoam boxes / a lot of paper packing (have also met other, more high-tech, inserted objects). But this system will logically give temperatures below -10degC. (Not too sure how one might even control in that region of temperature, similar to problems in calibrating thermocouples with mixed inorganic compounds.)

Any (viable) option may depend on actual sample, presentation of sample, sensitivity of sample, (actual) time of flight. Non-direct (and oddly-timed) flights can often be a disaster due ignorance / labelling / handling errors.

Rgds / Charles.C

Dear Sankara Narayanan,

So nice to hear from you again. back.

And still the same hairstyle.

Haven't seen any current posters from Cote D'Ivoire unfortunately.

3-5 days ? You are a brave man. Very lengthy IMEX if the material is sensitive to temperature. Will surely be problematic at the (numerous?) delay points.

No idea about official options, seem probable to exist (at a "price"). IMEX people usually do (smaller) frozen samples themselves (assuming availability of materials of course). And they often get it badly wrong. One method is to base preservative amount on calculated time then (double) it. But the problem gets increasingly worse with things like time / quantity and flight manouevres.

For pre-frozen seafood samples, the usual is dry ice slabs / styrofoam boxes / a lot of paper packing (have also met other, more high-tech, inserted objects). But this system will logically give temperatures below -10degC. (Not too sure how one might even control in that region of temperature, similar to problems in calibrating thermocouples with mixed inorganic compounds.)

Any (viable) option may depend on actual sample, presentation of sample, sensitivity of sample, (actual) time of flight. Non-direct (and oddly-timed) flights can often be a disaster due ignorance / labelling / handling errors.

Rgds / Charles.C