Jens Mangelsen, chief commercial officer at Intelsius
Intelsius
Jens Mangelsen serves as chief commercial officer at Intelsius, a global manufacturer of temperature-controlled pharmaceutical packaging. An engineer with over 20 years in cold chain logistics, he spent a decade as technical director before leading the company's push toward digitally integrated systems and drone-based medical delivery.
Q: Intelsius was founded to solve a biosecurity crisis—the transport of BSE samples in the late 1990s. How does that safety-first background, combined with your engineering experience, shape how the company approaches sustainability today?
A: "From the start, it was all about the performance and integrity of the sample. Quality first. Over the last 10 years, sustainability evolved from a secondary consideration into a central design requirement. But there is no compromise on performance—that is still the foundation.
Our paper-based dry ice shipper, GreenTherm, is a good example of combining the two. It provides certified temperature integrity and meets UN packaging compliance for biosample transport, while being made from 70% recycled raw content and 100% recyclable in a single paper waste stream."
Q: Sustainability has become a board-level priority across life sciences. From where you sit, what are the biggest blind spots that still persist in laboratory sample supply chains?
A: "Companies have put significant work into their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, but the biggest blind spot remains indirect Scope 3 emissions. Packaging is a prime example. It gets treated as a small operational detail, yet in a large lab network, you are looking at millions of single-use plastic items moving through the supply chain every day. That volume accumulates fast.
EPS illustrates this perfectly. It is technically recyclable, but in practice, much of it simply ends up in landfill. Recycling rates vary by region across Europe, the US, and Asia-Pacific, but the underlying pattern holds everywhere. Paper-based insulation rewrites that equation because paper is the most common and accessible recycling stream in existence."
Q: There is a persistent belief that sustainable materials cannot match the thermal protection of traditional foams. Walk us through the physics—how does GreenTherm work as an insulator?
A: "Expanded polystyrene (EPS) became an industry standard over the last 40 years because it is cheap, lightweight, and a super-effective insulator. Paper-based cellulose works on the same principle: trapping air to slow down heat transfer, creating a dense network of air pockets that resist the exchange between the payload and the outside environment.
But we need to be honest—there are a few tradeoffs. The R-value difference is about 15 percent compared to EPS. We compensate for that in the design by using slightly more insulation, such as increasing wall thickness by 4 or 5 millimeters, or occasionally a marginally higher coolant volume. The performance outcome is equivalent.
The more important comparison is total lifecycle impact. When you factor in material sourcing, recyclability, and end-of-life realities, the overall environmental footprint of a cellulose solution is lower."
Q: You qualify GreenTherm against the ISTA 7D standard. What does that testing actually put the packaging through?
A: "ISTA—the International Safe Transit Association—sets testing standards for packaging performance under real-world shipping conditions. The 7D standard specifically tests temperature performance. It takes a package through the ambient exposure it faces in transit: a summer profile pushing up to $35^{\circ}C$, a winter profile dropping below freezing.
We run an ISTA-certified testing lab with climate chambers to qualify packaging before it ships. Because we have 25 years of experience developing temperature-controlled packaging, making the design adjustments to achieve a 96-hour hold with a cellulose-based dry ice solution was not a surprise to the team."
Q: The EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation sets a strict 2030 deadline for recyclable packaging. For a US-based lab manager shipping globally, why should that be on their radar now?
A: "There are two scenarios worth understanding. The direct impact is straightforward: if a lab is shipping components, reagents, or consumables into the EU, those products placed on the EU market must be in recyclable packaging by 2030. That deadline is four years away—inside most procurement cycles.
For return shipments out of the EU, the impact is less about regulation and more about partner access. Hospitals and investigator sites across Europe already operate under their own sustainability policies, and arriving with foam packaging is becoming a friction point. What we have seen in practice is that this shift is being driven by companies, not governments. Our largest agreements in the last few months came from US customers who made the decision themselves."
Q: For years, supply chain performance was measured by temperature compliance and cost. How should labs rethink what efficiency means today?
A: "For a long time, efficiency meant one thing: delivering a sample safely at the lowest possible transport cost. That calculation has expanded. Carbon compliance and resilience now sit alongside cost, with safety remaining non-negotiable.
We are seeing organizations track new operational metrics: carbon per shipment, CO2 per unit, total dry ice consumption. A practical first step for any lab is to establish a carbon-per-shipment baseline and work forward from there.
Then there are the end-of-life economics, which tend to surprise people. In Europe, disposal fees for plastic waste run significantly higher than for paper. If that paper enters a dedicated recycling stream rather than general waste, what was a disposal penalty becomes a financial return."
Q: Looking ahead 5 to 10 years, what innovations do you believe will most significantly transform the environmental impact of cold chain logistics?
A: "The biggest shift is that cold chain logistics is moving beyond pure performance toward a more integrated, carbon-optimized network. We call this approach "green and connected." It means moving away from standard single-use packaging toward solutions that are either highly recyclable or genuinely reusable, often managed on lease models.
At the same time, those systems will be digitally integrated. Sensors will report in-transit performance and reduce product loss, giving labs the data to make better decisions. The packaging becomes part of the information network, not just a box around the sample."
Q: What role should suppliers play in driving that transition?
A: "Getting labs to a genuinely circular outcome is the supplier's responsibility. Lab managers have laboratories to run. They are not sitting around thinking about packaging logistics. We have to understand the science and the supply chain well enough to present the right option for every scenario.
Take the choice between reusable and single-use packaging. Reusable networks thrive in closed-loop, regional situations. But for long-distance shipping—clinical trial samples moving across time zones—return logistics are expensive and carry a significant CO2 impact. In those routes, a highly recyclable single-use solution is often the better environmental outcome.
Education also extends to end-of-life realities. The term "curbside recyclable" only means you can put a box in a bin. Depending on where you are, it might still go to landfill or incineration. The supplier's role is to ensure a lab knows how to route a cellulose solution into a dedicated paper recycling stream. That is what drives circular change."
Hear more from Jens and Intelsius founder and CEO David P. Walsh at Lab Manager’s Green Labs Digital Summit 2026, May 12–13.
