Shipping Meat and Frozen Meals with Dry Ice

Why Ship Meat and Meals by Air Freight?

Most of the world’s meat trade travels by sea in large frozen containers. Air freight becomes relevant when coordination, margin, or market access matters more than the freight price per kilogram. This happens more often than you might think.

Think of a premium beef exporter serving a new customer in Southeast Asia who wants the first order to arrive quickly and intact to open the relationship. Or a prepared frozen meals manufacturer launching in a distant retail market who can’t wait four weeks for a boat. Or halal and kosher shipments where the certification chain must be tightly documented and every link counts.

In all these cases, the decisive factor isn’t the lowest price but the certainty that the shipment arrives frozen, on time, and with accurate paperwork.

Frozen meat and prepared meals require an unbroken cold chain. With dry ice, we keep your shipment frozen solid throughout the entire air transport, ensuring quality and food safety right up to delivery.

Cold Chain for Meat and Meals

Frozen meat and ready meals ship at -18°C or colder. Unlike flowers or pharmaceuticals, the main challenge here is mass and volume. Meat often comes in heavier packages and larger batches, meaning the packaging has more thermal inertia but also requires more dry ice to keep the core cold.

We use insulated pallet boxes and adjust the dry ice quantity based on both weight and transit time. For larger volumes or longer routes, we employ actively cooled ULD containers so temperature isn’t reliant on sublimation alone. This keeps the core temperature of a full pallet just as reliable as that of a single box.

Customs and Veterinary Regulations for Meat

Meat probably has the strictest veterinary gateway of all food products. Imports from third countries are only allowed from recognized countries and approved facilities, must go through a border inspection post, and require a veterinary health certificate plus TRACES registration. The NVWA (Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority) checks not only temperature and documents but also the origin and animal health status of the exporting country.

On the export side, it’s about market access: many destinations impose their own requirements, from specific export certificates to species- or region-specific restrictions. For halal or kosher meat, the associated certification must accompany the shipment and meet the importing country’s demands. We verify per destination which documents and approvals are necessary so your shipment won’t get held up at customs abroad.

• Export of European premium meat → Asia, Middle East
• Prepared meals → international retail and hospitality
• Halal/kosher shipments with certification → worldwide