ATMOsphere announced in its 2025 market study that Europe ended 2025 with 111,650 transcritical CO2 refrigeration sites, including 106,000 food retail stores and 5,650 industrial installations, while transcritical CO2 penetration in European food retail reached 34% of an estimated 305,000-store market. The figures make Europe the largest installed base covered in the study and place the region well ahead of North America, Japan and other tracked markets.
Europe also accounted for 19.7 million self-contained hydrocarbon cabinets in food retail and 4,100 industrial sites using low-charge ammonia systems by December 2025. Within transcritical CO2, stores with centralized racks rose 15% year over year to 88,000 and stores using condensing units increased 24% to 18,000, up from 76,200 and 14,500 respectively; overall store penetration was 30% in 2024 and 23% in 2023. For units sold in 2025, half of reported transcritical CO2 racks were in the 100–300kW range, while 71% of condensing units offered 11–20kW of cooling capacity.
North America remained a smaller but expanding market, with 5,120 food retail stores and 1,240 industrial sites using transcritical CO2 for a total of 6,360 sites. Of the food retail total, 3,460 stores were in the U.S. and 1,660 were in Canada, while supermarket and grocery penetration reached 6% across North America and 2% across all retail food stores when convenience outlets are included; industrial CO2 sites rose 42% from 870 in 2024. The region also reached 5.1 million self-contained hydrocarbon cases in food retail and 1,480 industrial sites using low-charge ammonia systems, with new builds accounting for 87% of reported transcritical CO2 rack projects in 2025.
Japan reached 14,930 total transcritical CO2 sites, including 14,350 food retail stores and 580 industrial sites, with the store base made up of 13,500 convenience stores and 850 supermarkets. Penetration stood at 24% in convenience stores, 4% in supermarkets and 18% across all food retail stores. Australia counted 425 transcritical CO2 sites and New Zealand 320, while Latin America reached 840 and South Africa 660; Latin America also totaled 9.4 million self-contained hydrocarbon cases, and the study’s first snapshot of additional Asian markets put China at 35 transcritical CO2 sites, South Korea at 10 and Southeast Asia at 35.
All figures in the study are estimates as of December 2025, and the report was originally published in April 2026. The data set combines manufacturer surveys, interviews with end users and contractors, public installation information and association input across Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Latin America, South Africa, China, South Korea and Southeast Asia, with the last three Asian markets treated as snapshot regions designed to show minimum installation levels. The scale of the shift is visible in the historical comparison: ATMOsphere counted 140 transcritical CO2 installations worldwide in 2008, while the 2025 study estimates 111,650 in Europe alone.