Transport of blood components

Blood components are usually transported under similar temperature conditions to used for storage.

Lifeblood uses thermally insulated cardboard boxes with a variety of different configurations of frozen, chilled and room temperature ballast packs to maintain specified product temperatures.

Lifeblood’s national shipper configurations ensure that blood components remain within the required temperature specification during transportation.

There are several packing configurations, each with a specific validated transport time, the use of which will depend on the:

component type
ambient temperature
number of components, and
anticipated transit time.

Red cell configurations R1 to R4 maintain components within a temperature range of 2 ºC to 10 ºC.

Platelet configurations P1 and P2 maintain components within a temperature range of 20 ºC to 24 ºC.

Frozen component configurations F1 and F2 maintain components at ≤–25 ºC. The F2 configuration is used for routine transport of frozen clinical components and requires dry ice. The F1 shipper configuration is available to use as a contingency if no dry ice is available.

When the anticipated transport time is expected to exceed the maximum transport time, shippers will contain a data logger to continuously record the internal temperature of the shipment.

If the data logger shows that the temperature has gone outside specifications, the data is downloaded and analysed and this allows a decision to be made on whether the contents are suitable for use.

Lifeblood's shippers can also be used to transport blood components between laboratories and hospitals in your local health network. When doing so, make sure the blood components are packed using one of the Lifeblood validated packing configurations.

Where other shipper configurations or non-Lifeblood shippers are used for transporting blood components, they should have been validated for the appropriate transit times and environmental conditions.

For hospitals without an onsite laboratory that wish to return unused blood components to another hospital in your network, please consult with your Transfusion Service Provider for instructions.

Updated September 2025