Flexible refrigeration solutions Hauser

FLEXIBLE REFRIGERATION SOLUTIONS

Hauser GmbH is a leading European supplier of refrigerated display cabinets and refrigeration systems based in Linz-Urfahr, Austria. Industry Europe looks at the latest from the company, including its continued dedication to the production of energy-efficient solutions.

Hauser is a family business with more than 60 years of experience in refrigeration. The company manufactures refrigeration cabinets for commercial purposes and employs over 400 people. Hauser sells only to other businesses, and its biggest customers are supermarkets, cash and carry outlets and discount stores.

The company has two main production plants. The factory in Austria, at Sankt Martin im Mühlkreis, has an area of 13,500 square metres and was established in 1971. Besides producing refrigeration cabinets, the factory at Sankt Martin has four test rooms that enable Hauser to conduct tests in-house. Hauser set up its factory in the Czech Republic back in 1990. This factory, in Kaplice, has helped it to build up its strong position in central and eastern European markets.

Leader in refrigerated cabinets

Hauser’s refrigerated cabinets include serveover counters, multideck display cabinets, deep-freezing cabinets and integral refrigerated cabinets. In terms of serve-over counters, at the EuroShop 2014 trade show it introduced its new versatile models from the Varius series, which can adapt flexibly to specific customer needs.

Its efficient refrigerated multideck display cabinets are offered in its trademark Regius, Regas, Renima and Rebas ranges. All of these have design features which are regularly updated and wide-ranging configurations. All Hauser cabinets of this kind can be configured individually to accommodate a wide range of market sizes and applications.

Meanwhile, Hauser’s Meranis, Mirengo and Museta deep-freezing cabinets come in a range of configurations, from chest-style freezers to upright multi-tiered versions. It also offers integral refrigerated cabinets that are simply plugged and are available according to customer request.

LED lighting solutions

In the retail sector, refrigeration cabinets are expected to be visually impressive as well as reliable. One way to enhance the visual impact of refrigeration is through LED lighting, and Hauser has introduced LED lighting in units such as its Regius display cabinet for meat and dairy products. “Visually, LED means you can play with different colours

BITZER – THE HEART OF FRESHNESS

The BITZER Group is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of refrigeration compressors. Refrigeration and air conditioning technology makes an invaluable contribution to our world: food can be transported thousands of kilometers and then stored, all the while maintaining freshness and quality. Air conditioning has vastly improved living and working environments.

Blood banks save the lives of countless people every day, whilst process cooling makes it possible to manufacture many products such as semiconductors. All this means that air conditioning and refrigeration systems have to function properly. In other words, their hearts have to beat reliably. These hearts are the compressors. BITZER has been producing refrigeration compressors, condensing units and pressure vessels for refrigeration and air conditioning technology for 80 years, and it guarantees customers worldwide that they can rely on the perfect heartbeat everywhere and at all times.

The compressor specialist BITZER is a globally active company with sales companies and production sites for reciprocating, screw and scroll compressors as well as pressure vessels. In 2013, 3,200 employees generated sales of €621 million.

and create any colour you want. We offer LED lighting as standard on our serve-over cabinets. LED lighting also has important advantages in terms of energy efficiency. It consumes less electricity and at the same time it brings less heat into the cabinet,” says a company spokesperson.

The look of retail spaces has changed a lot since the 1970s, and for supermarkets battling to attract the attention of consumers, a uniform white colour for refrigeration units is sometimes no longer enough. To ensure that it can meet the expectations of its clients, Hauser runs a fully automated painting line. “For the retail sector, colour has an important role to play. Our customers often want green or orange colours for displaying fruit and vegetables as a way to reiterate the freshness. The new painting line means that we can do the jobs in-house and react more quickly to our customers’ changing requirements.”

Energy efficiency

But it is not just the look and functioning of a product that matter: Hauser’s customers are also concerned about the running costs of a refrigeration unit as opposed to the upfront cost. With energy prices continuing to soar, energy efficiency is a key driver, particularly for the big retail chains. In the area of systems engineering, Hauser uses modern technologies that include integrated systems to utilise waste heat from refrigeration systems and carbon dioxide as a natural and environmentally sound refrigerant for the future. Its ingenious Eco ES system enables supermarkets to save energy by using the heat that is discharged by their refrigeration cabinets to heat the whole of the building. Heating the supermarket with the refrigeration system can bring down its overall energy consumption. Rather than being wasted, the heat that comes out of the refrigeration system is fed into a heat exchanger in the store.

Thanks to Hauser’s Eco ES technology, supermarkets with substantial refrigeration capacity have even been able to do without oil and gas heating altogether. Hauser has the capacity to provide customers with turnkey solutions, including planning, delivery and installation. Taking a centralised approach also allows refrigeration to be centrally controlled, making for greater energy efficiency.

The company spokesperson adds: “With the Eco ES system, all sorts of temperatures can be visualised on the screen of a PC. You can see the store’s temperature as well as the refrigeration temperature. There are even clever modules that pick up the weather forecast and are synchronised with it. This means that the system will start producing hot water if it knows the weather is going to be cold.” Market outreach

Countries outside Austria account for over 70 per cent of Hauser’s sales, making the company a highly successful exporter. Besides supplying refrigeration units to many of the big European supermarket chains, Hauser also sells refrigeration systems for industrial premises such as meat factories and delivery depots.

Hauser’s independent sales offices in Austria, Germany and the UK can deal with customers directly. The company also has a wide network of service engineers, and customers throughout Europe can contact Hauser on a special 24-hour hotline. “After-sales care is part of the Hauser philosophy. We don’t just want to sell equipment. We want to help our clients to maintain it and look after it properly.” n