Rivacold America has joined the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council (NASRC) as a silver member. Rivacold is a manufacturer of refrigeration assemblies, including compressor receiver sets, open and housed condensing units, packaged and split systems, multi-compressor packs, air cooled and compact condensers, static evaporators, and unit coolers.
Established in Italy in 1966, Rivacold has grown to have a global presence and now offers a number of natural refrigerant technologies, such as CO2 condensing units and R290 packaged units for walk-ins.The company has engineered and installed hundreds of cost effective, efficient solutions utilizing natural refrigerants.More recently, Rivacold has begun to grow their presence in the U.S.market, where they are continuing to emphasize their natural refrigerant technologies.
“While we all continued to monitor the evolution of lessen vironmentally impactful synthetic refrigerants, it became more and more clear that natural refrigerants have a long-term place in our industry” said Doug Schmidt, president of Rivacold America.“There is a visible trend today with multi-circuited parallel hydrocarbon and CO2 split systems, both of which Rivacold has great experience with. Therefore, when given the opportunity to be a part of NASRC and help accelerate the movement in the market to a more stable and responsible position, it only seemed natural and we look forward to getting more engaged.”
Globally, the supermarket industry has begun to transition to climate-friendly refrigerants with low global warming potential (GWP). Natural refrigerants, including carbon dioxide (CO2), ammonia (NH3) and hydrocarbons, have extremely low global warming potentials and offer technically viable solutions in supermarkets.
However, despite the growth in natural refrigerant adoption throughout Europe, natural refrigerants are not yet widely adopted in the U.S. due to a unique set of market barriers, such as upfront costs, lack of trained service contractors, and uncertainty around lifecycle costs.
The NASRC is a 501c3 nonprofit focused on taking action to eliminate the barriers slowing the widespread adoption of natural refrigerants in supermarkets and create a more climate-friendly future for refrigeration. The organization works with Rivacold and over 125 other industry organizations to take actions that overcome the challenges associated with naturals.
“We are excited to welcome Rivacold to our membership network,” said Danielle Wright, executive director of the NASRC. “We look forward to leveraging their global expertise to add strength to our initiatives.”
In addition to Rivacold, NASRC is supported by a strong network of members, which represents over 24,000 supermarket locations in North America, major equipment manufacturers, service contractors, and other stakeholders.
“Our network of members is the driving force that propels our mission forward,” said Wright. “Together, we can move the needle on natural refrigerant adoption in the U.S., and we are pleased to have Rivacold participate in those efforts.”
