Interview: Panasonic Has Sold 7,000 CO₂ Condensing Units in Europe, with 2,500 Sold in 2025 Alone, Says Managing Director

To date Panasonic has sold 7,000 CO₂ (R744) outdoor condensing units (CDUs) in Europe, with 2,500 sold in 2025 alone ‒ a more than 37% increase in market sales, according to the Managing Director of Panasonic Cold Chain Poland, Gaku Shimada.

Shimada, along with Pawel Jankowski, Panasonic Cold Chain Poland’s General Manager, spoke with NaturalRefrigerants.com in an exclusive interview. Panasonic Cold Chain Poland was formed after Panasonic acquired Area Cooling Solutions, a Polish manufacturer of CO₂ Condensing Units, in December 2024.

In 2024, the Japanese company imported €13 million worth of CO₂ CDUs to Europe compared to €1 million in 2020. “Between the combination of our imported units from Japan and our units manufactured in Poland, Panasonic holds more than 30% of the European CO₂ CDU market,” Shimada said, adding that the company’s CO₂ CDU sales in the region grew 200% from 2023 to 2024.

Since launching its first CO₂ CDU in 2010, Panasonic has delivered roughly 31,000 units to 7,000 businesses worldwide as of March 2025, with applications including food retail, food processing and low-temperature (LT) warehouses. In 2024, before establishing Panasonic Cold Chain Poland, 46% of all CDUs sold by Panasonic used CO ₂ refrigerant, with a 5% year-over-year growth rate for units with CO ₂.

In 2024, the use of transcritical CO₂ CDUs grew in Europe by 71%, going from 8,500 units as of December 2023 to 14,500 units in December 2024, according to ATMOSphere’s “2024 Natural Refrigerants: State of the Industry” report. ATMOsphere is the publisher of NaturalRefrigerants.com.

New product: Panasonic plans to launch in 2026 a 1HP CO₂ unit suitable for small-scale medium-temperature (MT) or LT walk-in applications, including hotels, restaurants and cafeterias. The product represents the first collaboration between the Japanese and Polish sections of the company.

• “We already have customers for the unit as a result of the unit’s field tests,” Jankowski said, while mentioning that early adopters are using the unit for their walk-in freezers.
• Jankowski indicated that Panasonic expects to sell hundreds of 1HP units in 2026.

New markets: Recently Panasonic entered an agreement with a Polish grocery chain to install CO₂ CDUs in 60 new stores over the next two years.

• “This is dramatic news,” said Shimada, indicating that this is the first major retailer in Poland to make the switch to CO₂ for small CDUs.
• “In the last two months we’ve trained 300 people at our Poland facility ‒ the majority Panasonic employees ‒ to install and service CO₂ products,” Jankowski said. “We can quickly educate companies and technicians,” he added.

Available products: In Europe, Panasonic currently offers 2HP, 4HP, 10HP and 20HP CO₂ outdoor systems for MT and LT applications, with the 20HP unit launched in Europe in February 2024.

• “The main product we sell in Europe is our 10HP CO₂ CDU used for walk-in freezers in retail applications,” Shimada noted.
• With its extensive CO₂  experience in Japan, Panasonic feels it is in a unique position to suggest a wider range of CO₂ solutions to customers, according to Shimada.

Quotable: “Green government policies and corporate mission statements are driving large Western European retailers to switch to CO₂-based systems, especially after testing the technology for a few years,” Jankowski said. “The market uptake in Eastern Europe is not as fast as that in Western Europe, but our new retail project in Poland is a first step.”

“Between the combination of our imported units from Japan and our units manufactured in Poland, Panasonic holds more than 30% of the European CO₂ CDU market.”

Gaku Shimada, Managing Director of Panasonic Cold Chain Poland