A new kind of container brings new questions, about buying it, using it, flying with it, and the physics underneath. Here are the ones we hear most. If yours isn't here, just ask.
Both models can be reserved online, the LN₂ and the Multi-Temperature, which secures a unit from the first production series. For fleet quantities or for evaluation units, contact us and we will confirm availability after a short call about your workflow.
Lead time depends on your configuration and the quantity you need. Production runs in controlled batches, so we confirm a delivery window with you before you commit. Tell us what you are planning and we will come back with current availability.
Each Crìa Go ships with the container and the coolant cartridges for your selected configuration. The Bluetooth datalogger is included as standard. If you need a logger compatible with your own monitoring system instead, ask us when you order and we will confirm what is possible. Documentation for air transport is supplied with the unit.
Yes. We run paid pilots and evaluation placements with laboratories, biobanks, and couriers, under predefined testing conditions so you can compare against your current containers on your own routes. Contact us with your use case and we will propose a pilot scope.
We sell units outright today. Leasing models are being piloted with selected fleet customers to reduce upfront cost, and we can discuss this if you are evaluating a fleet rather than single units.
We ship internationally from our European operations. Duties, import taxes, and customs clearance are handled by the receiving party unless agreed otherwise in the quote. We supply the commercial and technical documentation required for import.
Crìa containers carry a warranty of at least two years, in line with industry practice, covering the vacuum insulation and the container structure under normal use. Expected service life is five years or longer depending on use and handling.
It depends on the coolant and the setpoint. With liquid nitrogen, Crìa Go LN₂ holds −196 °C for 5 days. With reusable PCM cartridges it holds setpoints from +8 °C down to −67 °C for 3 to 15 days depending on the range selected. With dry ice it holds 5 days at −78 °C. Hold times are measured under the ISTA 7E summer profile and vary with ambient temperature and payload mass.
Its internal capacity takes small vials, cryotubes, and ampoules: suited to moving biological materials between laboratories, biobanks, and research sites. Capacity depends on the cartridge: 0.6 L (35 vials of 2 ml) with PCM, 1.5 L (75 vials) with dry ice, and 0.3 L (15 vials) with LN₂.
Crìa Go accepts five interchangeable cartridges:
All cartridge bodies are built for low weight and even heat distribution. PCM cartridges are reconditioned in a standard laboratory freezer, so both the container and the coolant are reusable.
Load the conditioned coolant cartridge, load your samples, and close the lid. There is no pre-conditioning cycle, no re-evacuation, and no waiting for the container to stabilise, because the vacuum insulation is established during manufacturing and does not need to be recreated. Preparation takes minutes rather than hours.
Yes. Crìa containers are designed for repeated use across many shipments, with an expected service life of five years or longer. Between shipments you reload or recondition the coolant cartridge. The vacuum insulation itself requires no maintenance, no servicing, and no re-evacuation over the life of the container.
Crìa containers are secondary packaging and are not in direct contact with the sample, so standard laboratory cleaning procedures are normally sufficient. The stainless-steel construction is compatible with common cleaning agents, including chlorine-based solutions, and the container tolerates autoclave cycles with the cap removed.
No. Crìa containers can be carried, laid flat, or stowed in any orientation. Orientation does not affect the structural integrity or the robustness of the container, and its effect on thermal performance is minimal. This is what sets Crìa apart from conventional dry shippers, which must stay upright: Crìa is the one container that can reliably travel horizontally.
Crìa containers are built as a fully metallic vacuum vessel inside a protective outer shell, and they are designed to take the knocks of real transport rather than careful handling. Mechanical robustness is one of the reasons the vacuum stays stable over time. The datalogger records shock events with timestamps, so mishandling is visible after the fact.
None in practice. There is nothing to program, plug in, or pre-condition: load the cartridge, load the samples, close, and ship. Handling documentation comes with each unit, and if your team wants a walkthrough we are happy to run one.
Crìa Go is designed to meet the applicable IATA provisions for dry shippers and contains no pressurised gas. It is orientation-independent, so it can be laid flat, and its dimensions are compatible with cabin baggage. From the container side it is ready to fly. What determines the rest is the material you are carrying and its own classification, and as with any dry shipper, carriage is subject to acceptance by the operating airline. We supply the documentation you need to present.
The container itself is compliant. In the LN₂ configuration the nitrogen is fully absorbed in a porous material, which is the condition under which the IATA Dangerous Goods Regulations allow dry shippers in baggage. In the dry-ice configuration the quantity carried is well below the 2.5 kg per person limit that applies to passenger baggage, and the container vents CO₂ as required. Carriage still requires the operating airline's approval, and for cargo shipments dry ice falls under Packing Instruction 954. Classification, labelling, and declaration of the material you are shipping remain the shipper's responsibility.
Yes. Crìa containers are used as secondary packaging within a compliant packaging system, alongside the primary receptacle and absorbent material required by IATA Packing Instruction 650. Crìa does not alter the classification of the material you are shipping.
Each unit ships with handling and transport documentation covering the container and the coolant configuration, suitable for presenting to airlines and couriers. Validation reports from our mechanical and thermal testing are available on request for your qualification file.
Crìa Go is built for personal transport: someone carries it, often in an aircraft cabin, and several specialist hand-carry courier partners already work with us. Crìa Box is the product for shipments that move through courier and freight networks. If you are not sure which fits your workflow, tell us your routes and we will advise.
Yes. Crìa containers have been through thermal and mechanical testing, including vibration, drop, and durability testing, and thermal performance has been validated against ISTA protocols including 3A and 7E. Validation reports are available on request for your qualification file. {{ISTA_STATUS}}
Crìa uses high-vacuum insulation developed from the technologies behind particle accelerators and space systems. Removing residual gas from the insulation gap removes the dominant path for heat to travel, so thermal performance improves sharply as vacuum quality increases. We achieve it through material selection, assembly precision, and proprietary industrial processes. The result is stable insulation with very low heat leak, which cuts the coolant every shipment needs.
Crìa containers operate between 10⁻⁶ and 10⁻⁹ mbar. Below roughly 10⁻⁴ mbar, heat conduction through residual gas effectively stops, so operating several orders of magnitude beyond that threshold gives margin rather than a marginal gain.
Conventional dewars bond a composite neck to the metal structure with adhesives. Over time, moisture permeates the polymeric or porous composite, degrading the vacuum and the insulation. Those adhesives also become brittle at cryogenic temperatures and cannot bear the container's weight on its side, which is why most dewars must stay upright.
The Crìa vacuum vessel is fully metallic with welded joints and no adhesive bonds, so the vacuum envelope itself is not a path for moisture ingress. Once the high vacuum is created it stays stable across the service life of the container.
In a traditional dewar filled with liquid nitrogen, gases and moisture condense on the cold inner walls, a process called cryopumping. It lowers internal pressure, but unpredictably, giving variable insulation and requiring periodic re-evacuation or long preconditioning. Crìa containers hold a stable high vacuum from the moment they are manufactured, so they never rely on cryopumping. Insulation is repeatable, with no waiting and no maintenance.
No. Cryopumping only works efficiently near liquid-nitrogen temperatures, around −196 °C. At dry-ice temperatures, around −78 °C, it is ineffective, so conventional dewars lose much of their performance in exactly the range where a lot of biological material travels. Crìa's engineered high vacuum delivers full insulation at dry-ice and PCM temperatures as well.
Because the vacuum is already established and stable from manufacturing, there is no cryopumping to wait for and no conditioning cycle to run. A Crìa container is ready to load in minutes.
No. The container is entirely passive. Insulation performance comes from the vacuum itself, so cooling relies only on the coolant you load: reusable PCM packs, dry ice, or an LN₂ absorbent cartridge. The container has no fans, no pumps, no moving parts, and nothing to plug in, and it draws no power at any point. Each unit ships with a Bluetooth datalogger, which has its own small battery and monitors temperature and handling. It records the trip, it does not cool: thermal performance is identical whether it is fitted or not.
A loss of vacuum would reduce insulation performance to something closer to a conventional container, which is why the fully metallic welded architecture matters: there is no adhesive joint or porous composite in the vacuum boundary to degrade. The failure modes that affect conventional dewars over time, moisture permeation and adhesive ageing, are removed by construction rather than managed by maintenance.
Yes, as with any passive container. Hold times are quoted against a defined test profile, and hotter ambient conditions shorten them while cooler conditions extend them. Our published figures are measured under the ISTA 7E summer profile rather than at room temperature, so they reflect realistic transport conditions.
A standard dry shipper relies on cryopumping to reach its working vacuum, needs preconditioning before use, must usually travel upright, and loses insulation performance as its vacuum degrades. Crìa holds an engineered high vacuum from manufacture, is ready in minutes, works in any orientation, and holds performance across its service life. Crìa also works efficiently at dry-ice and PCM temperatures, where cryopumped dewars are weakest.
It comes from ultra-high-vacuum engineering developed for particle accelerators, a field with almost no overlap with logistics or packaging. Our chief scientist has around thirty years of specialised know-how in it, and our advisory board comes from the same world, including CERN. The underlying architecture is protected by an international patent application. {{PATENT_PUBLIC_REF}}
Included. Every Crìa Go ships with a Bluetooth datalogger as standard, paired with the Crìa companion app. If you would rather use a logger compatible with your own monitoring system, ask us when you order and we will confirm what is possible. Either way the container performs the same: monitoring is there to give you evidence of the trip, not to make the container function.
Payload and outer temperature over the whole trip, and handling events detected by an accelerometer, each with a timestamp. Threshold alerts can be set for both temperature and shock. More functionality is on the way, so stay tuned.
No. Thermal performance is identical with or without it.
Yes. Each trip can be exported as a PDF or CSV record covering minimum, mean, and maximum temperature, any excursions against your thresholds, and any shock events. These are records for your own quality documentation.
Not today. The datalogger records temperature and handling, not position. Location tracking is on our roadmap.
No. It records locally and syncs over Bluetooth to the app when you are near the container, so it works on flights and in facilities with no coverage. There is no subscription required to read your own data.
More than two weeks, depending on how intensively you use it. Connecting to the app, syncing, and downloading data all draw more power, so a trip where you check in often runs the battery down faster than one where the logger simply records.
Crìa Go is a portable container that holds any setpoint from −196 °C up to +8 °C without batteries or external power. It is built for hand-carry, air travel, and laboratory use: high-vacuum insulation in a stainless-steel body with a protective outer shell, light enough to carry over the shoulder.
Crìa Go LN₂ is dedicated to cryogenic transport at −196 °C, optimised for that single job, and weighs under 4 kg fully loaded. Crìa Go Multi-Temperature takes interchangeable PCM, dry-ice, and LN₂ cartridges to cover the full range from −196 °C to +8 °C in one device, and weighs under 5 kg fully loaded.
Crìa Box is our shipping product line, for payloads that travel through courier and freight networks rather than being carried by hand. It will be available in a range of sizes and coolant configurations, so the container can be matched to the payload and the route instead of the other way round. {{BOX_SIZES}}
Crìa Go is for personal transport: someone carries it, often in an aircraft cabin. Crìa Box is for shipping: it goes through courier and freight networks at fleet scale. Both use the same vacuum insulation core.
Researchers, laboratory and biobank staff, and biotech teams who need to move small, temperature-sensitive biological materials such as cell lines, cryopreserved samples, and reagents. Typical settings include biobanking, reproductive medicine, cell and gene therapy logistics, and research facilities including cryo-electron microscopy.
Crìa reduces the use of single-use refrigerants and dry ice. On Crìa Go, reusable PCM cartridges cover +8 °C to −67 °C, with dry ice or LN₂ below that, so for a large part of the range both the container and the coolant are reusable. Smaller and lighter shipments also cut freight emissions. In validated customer use cases this reduced CO₂ emissions per shipment by more than 50%.
Crìa containers are built for a long service life, five years or longer, which is where most of the environmental benefit comes from: one reusable device replaces a stream of single-use boxes and discarded coolant. At end of life the stainless-steel vessel is recyclable.
Crìa was founded by people who have spent their careers in high-vacuum physics, supported by an advisory board including vacuum scientists from CERN. We started the company because we think that expertise is worth pointing at a real problem: the cold chain should not be the reason a fragile material cannot reach the place it is needed. See the team page for who we are.
If you didn't find what you were looking for, we're happy to help. Tell us about your cold chain and we'll answer directly.
