ECONOMY

As a global company, Frigoglass focuses on strategic projects of global impact to the extent possible. Such projects usually capture fundamental needs of the society and local communities in order to help them improve their quality of life.

Within such a strategic project a new range of coolers has been developed and deployed in the market since 2017, with an innovative technology that helps keep the products cool for longer time periods, even without power supply. Furthermore, the light in the coolers during the “Power OFF” periods also remains ON, which results to the cooler being often the only light source in the wider area.

The success of the new products lies mainly in the following factors: a) There is light source in an area that was previously often dark during power outage, b) The products inside the cooler remain refreshing cold at any time. These 2 elements result in more satisfied people (consumers and outlet owners), more life in the local community (around the “light source”) and higher living standards.

Furthermore, the new range has considerably lower energy consumption compared to conventional solutions (up to 70-80% less, due to respectively less running time needed to cool the products and keep them cold for the rest of the day) supporting environmental sustainability and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 7, 9, 11 and 13. This means up to 70-80% less CO2 emissions or around 300kg CO2 per cooler on a daily base. On an annual base for the specific range of products according to the annual sales number this would translate into approx. 1 Mio tones CO2 reduction vs. the replaced fleet. This number is expected to considerably increase next years considering that it has just been the range’s first launch in one country of Africa and within 2 main customers. The potential is big both in terms of countries and customers deployment.

Also, it exclusively uses environmentally friendly refrigerants (HC) that have low carbon footprint and further support our environmental sustainability goals.

The scope of developing a range and not a single product has been to allow for countries with different duration of available power supply to get exactly what they need at an optimized specification and cost. An other reason for the various products within the range is the right pricing of each one for the respective country/area where it is targeted for, so each product can be affordable and competitive for the target market.

The project has been a common effort together with our key stakeholders, which included close cooperation with customers on understanding the need, with suppliers on new materials and with local communities on running the field test.

Another facet of the project business plan includes introduction of the new range into alternative markets to explore from the secondary benefits of the products i.e. the zero noise during “Power OFF” operation. So, the products can be placed in meeting and conference rooms, for example, to provide refreshments in the day time without running cooling system. Cooling will be operated in the night time, which means a) no noise during day time, b) Lower load on the energy grid due to night time operation only, c) Lower bills for the owners of the products.