Halloween has passed and aside from pumpkins and scary costumes, dry ice is quite common party staple. Besides being a magical element for parties, it's used as a cooling agent for various things. For example: to preserve food, to do the blast cleaning, to make dry ice bombs and to package items that must remain cold or frozen, such as ice cream or biological samples (when mechanical cooling is not an option).
In biotech you can see that dry ice is an everyday thing. Besides the environmental impact, it has quite an impact on finances as well. Here is a simple comparison of two options:
1. Dry-ice shipment
European company, who manufactures COVID-19 CE-IVD labelled diagnostic kits and sells them in domestic market but also ships to US and Mexico.
They planned on sending first a small amount to US – with huge box of dry ice shipped by the world´s leading logistics company. The quotation for shipping 4 kits with dry ice sufficient for 4 days delivery costs 300 EUR.
Then there are temperature-controlled shipments. That European kit-maker got a quotation from a special logistics company who offers full service (dry ice refill with temperature control) transport to the customer. Temperature-controlled shipment of 200 kits – 2800 EUR; similar quotation for a 1 kit - 2100 EUR.
For this customer, the problem is shipping small amounts to their customers. If they ship 50+ kits, then it makes sense to use temperature-controlled service, otherwise it is too expensive for their customer.
2. Ambient temperature shipment
Second example comes from us. Our entire product range is stable at room temperature for a month. That magic component there is genetic modification in our enzymes, called Stability TAG. We are using DHL Express Delivery service and shipping at ambient temperature (costs around 35-50 EUR globally) that is roughly:
There are many more aspects to consider regarding dry ice shipments. It is classified as a “miscellaneous” hazard for several reasons and not all logistics companies have the permission to ship dry ice.
So, is dry ice trick or treat? It´s tricky product with its side effects but also a treat, as it helps to preserve and transport various items without need for mechanical cooling.
We are proud that we don´t need to calculate pros and cons of dry ice, as we chose the more sustainable path! If you want to know more about our Stability TAG technology, that enables us to use room-temperature shipping and storing, look here.
We are having a stability appreciation month, so here are all the good things related to stability from experiment set-up to logistics.
In our last story we talked about how animals can help to improve human health. This time we are talking about how humans could improve the health of animals, more specifically the health of horses and donkeys.
During the last couple of years PCR tests have become quite well-known, mostly in relation to the COVID-19. In reality, using PCR tests to diagnose diseases has been around for some time and it’s becoming increasingly more popular and diverse, allowing for better pathogen detection not just in the field of medicine, but also in other areas such as agriculture.
It is time to introduce another one of our amazing colleagues. For this month we have chosen our development and technology specialist Ilja.
