What The Fridge is Tropicalised?

Chances are if you’ve talked to me for anything longer than half a minute about commercial fridges you would have heard the word ‘tropicalised’ most likely said with some sort of exasperated gusto… It may have left you wondering why am I so emphatic about commercial fridges being tropicalised?? And WTFridge does tropicalised even mean? 

In short, tropicalised fridges are built for higher ambient temperatures and relative humidity. In our case the De Rigo tropicalised commercial fridges have larger condensers, but other fridges could have a larger condenser fan or larger pitch on the fan blade. Basically, the fridge is engineered to have a bit more grunt. 

Why is that important?

In some cases it’s not important at all. If you are putting the fridge into a supermarket or butchers with the perfect refrigeration environment; air conditioned, controlled temperature and humidity with no outside interference such as doors opening regularly with the outside air disrupting the ambient temperature etc. 

But, in Australia especially, where our temperatures and humidity can be quite honestly, ridiculous; if your store, café or deli isn’t able to maintain those perfect conditions, your regular self-contained refrigeration is going to struggle. The fridge won’t be able to maintain temperature, it will start to sweat and possibly even ice up. 

Why do I harp on about it? Because I have been on the other end of that phone call. Heard the frustration when that expensive piece of equipment is not working the way it should, there’s water on the floor (hello Health & Safety), you’re losing money in stock loss, the down time for every minute you’re waiting for a fridgie to come out and clear any ice ups and all costs involved in that. This is not a one-time phone call either. I have had these phone calls time and time again… and I’m not even in the service team! 

When Coolphase started the talks of ‘do we import commercial fridges’ the most important factor for us was they had to work well throughout Australia. Being Queenslanders, we know all too well the difficulties with high temperatures and humidity. We knew we had to have a tropicalised range and after seeing the DeRigo factory and their tropicalised fridges, confident we could back their fridges with a 12 month warranty on parts and labour, we were excited to start the importing process.