Italian manufacturer SCM Frigo has started up a 2.8MW (796TR) transcritical CO₂ (R744) refrigeration system featuring heat reclaim for a French facility in the beauty and cosmetics industry.
The project was initially announced at the 2025 IRN conference in Rottenburg am Neckar, Germany, last June. At the time, R&D Engineer Federica Rossetti said SCM Frigo was developing two containerized refrigeration systems and that one, with 1.5MW (426.5TR) of capacity, was already complete.
Rossetti described the installation as one of the company’s first major industrial refrigeration projects. During her presentation at the event, Rossetti added that, based on theoretical calculations, the COP was determined to be around 1.8.
The second unit has since been completed, and both units were started up at the end of May. “The SCM Frigo iBooster is now delivering natural CO₂ refrigeration at industrial scale, in one of the most demanding process environments in the industry,” SCM wrote on LinkedIn.
The system: The plug-and-play system consists of two containerized units, each with a flooded chiller providing medium-temperature (MT) cooling and a direct expansion (DX) chiller covering low-temperature (LT) capacity.
- The MT chiller provides 1.5MW (426TR) of cooling capacity at 6°C (42.8°F), while the low-temperature chiller delivers 1.3MW (370TR) of cooling capacity at −20°C (−4°F).
- The system uses 8-cylinder Bitzer inverter-driven compressors.
- “This project proved that the engineering logic we developed for commercial transcritical boosters – liquid ejectors, IHX optimisation, plug-and-play packaging – transfers directly to industrial scale,” said Mirko Bernabei, Beijer Ref OEM Segment Technical Director at SCM Frigo, in a statement.
Heat recovery: The system captures waste heat from the cooling process and produces 700kW (199TR) of heating for a demineralized water loop at 85°C (185°F).
- This high-temperature water can support industrial processes such as cleaning, sterilization and process heating.
- It also has 450kW (128TR) of capacity for space heating at 40–50°C (104–122°F).
Expansion to industrial refrigeration: SCM Frigo has recently undertaken larger CO₂ refrigeration projects in the industrial sector.
- In April 2025 it shared news about a 6MW (1,700TR) transcritical CO₂ refrigeration system at a shrimp-processing plant in Ecuador.
- The company has also supplied refrigeration systems to smaller industrial facilities, such as the Wilkin & Sons Essex jam factory in the U.K., where two 60kW (17.1TR) CO₂ booster packs replaced four HFC-based LT 30kW (8.5TR) screw packs in July 2025. And in February 2026, SCM Frigo supplied two racks for a 865kW (246TR) CO₂ refrigeration facility owned by Manawatu Cold Storage in New Zealand.
Quotable: “SCM Frigo now has the reference we needed to address industrial clients seriously,” said Anna Stella, Sales Director, in a statement. “The question is no longer whether CO₂ can work at this scale. The question now is how quickly we can support the next customer through the transition.”
