Battle for fridge plant market hots up
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THE FRIDGE PLANT market looked particularly lively at Hannover, stirred vigorously by news from German trailer-maker Schmitz Cargobull that it is planning to make its own. It will be offered as an alternative to fridges from mainstream suppliers such as Carrier Transicold and Thermo King only on Schmitz’s own temperature-controlled trailers. There are 15 trailers fitted with prototype fridge units already operating on trials in Europe; soon they will be joined by another 50 working in a range of different climates. After that, Schmitz says it will evaluate the trial results before deciding whether to commit to series production.
The company says it makes sense to integrate the design of the trailer and fridge plant in order to optimise thermal performance. The Schmitz fridge is an in-house design, suitable for multi-temperature work. It uses bought-in components, notably a Perkins diesel engine with belt drive to the compressor rather than Carrier’s electrically-driven compressor.
Although initial thoughts suggest that it will take a lot to lure operators away from their preferred proprietary fridges, Schmitz UK managing director Paul Avery points out that people said the same when Schmitz designed its own Rotos trailer axles: now they account for the vast majority of axles specified by customers.
Carrier Transicold is not resting on its laurels. It has uprated the cooling capacity of its topselling Vector 1850 trailer fridge plant, taking it from 18,000 to 18,800 watts at 0C/30C. There are new condenser coils that reduce the amount of refrigerant by 17%, while fuel consumption is reckoned to be 10% better.