The acceleration in online grocery shopping during the COVID pandemic has seen retailers look for viable alternatives to costly and labor-intensive home delivery models. Promising options include placing refrigerated click-and-collect lockers in convenient outdoor locations or expanding drive-ins pickup points outside the store, both fully connected to the store’s monitoring system.
Designing the lockers in particular presents manufacturers with several new challenges. To ensure retailers meet HACCP guidelines, accurate temperature control is needed to accommodate different kinds of product - while still remaining highly efficient. Similarly, many lockers will be located outside, so they need to be reliable, robust, and easy to monitor at range. And as refrigerant regulations tighten, using low-GWP refrigerant will be key to ensure the solution is future-proof.
With its comprehensive product portfolio, testing and development facilities, and experienced application experts Danfoss can help OEMs meet these considerations and achieve:
- Precise temperature control and cooling quality: Smart sensors, electronic controllers, IoT enablers can link the locker to Danfoss cloud services (or any existing central monitoring system), providing 24/7/365 remote temperature monitoring and alarms. Meanwhile, our large portfolio of fixed and variable-speed scroll and reciprocating compressors and condensing units can meet any application requirements and deliver high cooling quality and safety
- Minimal environmental impact: Corrosion-resistant microchannel heat exchangers (MCHE) can reduce refrigerant charge. And with an entire refrigeration portfolio qualified with A2L refrigerants as well as A3, we can ensure that your designs are future proof as the refrigerant regulations tighten
- High energy efficiency and reliability: Along with MCHE, Danfoss offers ball, solenoid, and expansion valves in a wide range of sizes and connection types. With an electronic thermostat and electronic controller, you can ensure a higher accuracy of the temperature as well as optimizing the compressor, fan, or defrost control. This generates higher efficiency and, in turn, reduces energy costs
- Durability in even the most rugged applications: Danfoss products are highly durable and already used in harsh, rugged environments such as refrigerated road transport and reefer shipping containers
“At Danfoss, we love sustainable, innovative design - and the new refrigerated lockers we’re helping OEMs to develop show exactly that,” says Hans Ole Matthiesen, Head of Global Refrigeration Marketing. “But they can be complex to build. It’s like fitting an entire supermarket into a closet.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re so excited to support OEMs with our broad range of products, and extensive testing and development facilities. We also have deep experience in this area. So whether you need to improve durability or energy efficiency, or need technical support, we can help.”