Supermarket giant Sainsbury’s is testing out a naturally refrigerated trailer for chilled and frozen goods.
The CO2 refrigerated unit trial is part of its review of its transport refrigeration gas and work to reduce its carbon footprint.
Sainsbury’s is working with Carrier Transicold in a two-year trial of the new-HFC free cooling technology for road transport.
A modified version of Carrier’s NaturaLINE refrigeration system, which was initially developed for deep sea containers, is being used.
Sainsbury’s head of transport operations Nick Davies said: “The new carbon dioxide technology has much less of an impact on climate change and we hope it will play a big part in helping us reduce our carbon emissions.
“We will be monitoring its performance closely and if successful, in line with our replacement plan, it could help us save over 70,000 tonnes of CO2 compared to the current refrigerated trailer fleet.”
Sainsbury’s converted all of its refrigerated depots in 2011 and is on track to switch 250 stores to CO2 refrigerant by 2014 with over 160 stores already moved over to the natural refrigeration system.
Last year, Sainsbury’s extended its Dual-Fleet to 51 vehicles, which uses a combination of diesel and biomethane from landfill. Each of these vehicles will save around 41 tonnes of CO2 from being dispersed into the atmosphere each year.
