A steel shipping container is essentially a giant heat sink with no insulation of its own — under direct sun, internal temperatures climb past 70°C, well beyond the failure threshold of wine, electronics, pharmaceuticals, paints, chemicals, and most food products making the same journey. The problem with conventional fixes like polystyrene panelling is bulk: enough rigid foam to meaningfully insulate a container interior eats into usable cargo volume and adds weight that costs money on every leg of the trip.
We approached this as a materials problem rather than a thickness problem. Cryophase’s container liner is 8mm thick and delivers insulation equivalent to roughly 50mm of polystyrene foam — a six-fold improvement in insulating value per millimetre of material, achieved through the liner’s internal structure rather than sheer mass. That’s what makes it light enough to install by hand, compact enough to store flat between uses, and cost-effective enough to deploy as standard practice rather than a premium option. For cargo making a multi-week sea freight journey through tropical and temperate zones alike, it’s a direct engineering answer to a problem the container itself was never designed to solve.