How to Ship Ice Cream? (Step by Step Guide)

Packaging is the first thing to think about when deciding how to distribute ice cream to your clients. Ice cream packaging should be thermally insulated and fitted with enough refrigerants to keep the product at a constant temperature of 0°C (32°F) or below.

Insulated shipping boxes are essential because they reduce heat transfer between the surroundings and the inside of the shipment, delaying the time it takes for the temperature within the container to reach equilibrium with the air temp.

Shipping coolers made of expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) have been popular in the past because they are thermally insulating, lightweight, and inexpensive.

However, EPS coolers have several hitches, including poor thermal performance, a large storage volume, and non-biodegradability, which make their use economically unmanageable.

Alternatively, IPC can supply additional insulating alternatives to EPS coolers without the need for tooling, resulting in a 75 percent decrease in shipping space and a substantial decrease (up to 33 percent) in the amount of dry ice required for ice cream delivery.

For transporting frozen items, dry ice is a great alternative to conventional ice. Normal ice is not only heavy, increasing the expense of your shipping, but it also dampens the inside of your package as it melts.

Couriers do not endorse it. Dry ice, on either hand, is compact and can help you save money on shipment.

Remember to take adequate safety precautions while transporting your ice cream with dry ice. If not handled properly, it can cause burns, therefore gloves and goggles are required for safe handling.

Consider that dry ice produces carbon dioxide, which must be vented to prevent an explosion. As a result, don’t make the package completely airtight. It is recommended that you wrap your ice cream with dry ice and ship it in a two-inch thick, durable polystyrene (EPS) container.

Consider the projected transit time plus a 24-hour buffer just in case.

Gel packs are often used for wrapping and delivering ice cream locally and are an excellent way to store food between 0 and 15 degrees.

They may not be perfect for keeping your ice cream items cold for an extended time, so choose expedited shipping alternatives with the shortest transit times.

Gel packs have the advantage of lasting longer than dry ice and maybe the best option for delivering ice cream with marshmallows, which may not be able to resist the extreme cold of -109° F of dry ice.

Dry ice requirements, as well as the risk of the unsaleable product, can both be reduced by reducing the time of transportation. Using expedited delivery options will assist ensure that your package arrives on time.

When exporting frozen meals, this is a wonderful approach to protect quality while also lowering the danger of the refrigerant not lasting as long as needed for delivery.

Also, be aware of any delivery delays, such as weekends or holidays, which could cause ice cream shipments to be delayed in transit unnecessarily.

When transporting ice cream domestically or globally, you must also consider the duration of the journey. After about 30 hours, the quality of your ice cream, no matter how properly packaged it is, can be impaired.

Keep the transit time to a minimum to properly protect its freshness and flavor, and use a shipping service with an optimum transit time of 30 hours or less to dramatically alleviate the vulnerabilities it could be exposed to.

Frozen shipments, such as ice cream, are delicate, and you need to be responsible for keeping track of what’s going on with your product until it arrives at its destination.

With branded emails, dedicated monitoring pages, and SMS notifications, the best carrier tracking system will help you keep full delivery visibility so you can have mental peace with your ice cream shipments.

You don’t want to go to the trouble of transporting ice cream only to have it perish at the recipient’s house. The last thing you want to see on your customer’s or buddy’s doorway is a soupy, rotten disaster.

To avoid this, make sure someone is there to accept it as soon as it comes or provide your courier the recipient’s phone number so they may call to have it picked up instead of leaving it on the porch.