Bfresh, a Chinese manufacturer of transcritical CO2 (R744) refrigeration systems and hydrocarbon-based plug-in cases, has joined the world’s leading natural refrigerant HVAC&R stakeholders as a platinum partner of the NaturalRefrigerants.com marketplace.
Bfresh is a brand of Sonyo Cold Chain, a Chinese light-commercial-refrigeration manufacturer founded in 1994 in Dalian City, where Bfresh is also headquartered. Sonyo Cold Chain has 1,200 employees and two production facilities, one in Dalian and another in Wuhan, along with one R&D center. Bfresh was established in 2024 and offers a wide variety of products for supermarkets, convenience stores and restaurants.
This includes a transcritical CO2 refrigeration system, which the company says has been exported to cold storage warehouses and supermarkets in Japan. There were an estimated 750 supermarkets and 470 industrial sites using transcritical CO2 systems in Japan in December 2024, according to ATMOsphere’s 2024 Market Report. ATMOsphere is the publisher of NaturalRefrigerants.com.
Additional CO2-based products include remote multi-deck showcases and island freezers, while on the hydrocarbons front, Bfresh’s offerings include commercial kitchen refrigerators and chest freezers. Ping Yang, General Manager at China IOL, which collects data on the country’s HVAC&R industry, said China’s light commercial refrigeration sector will be 60% R290 by 2024. Yang made her comments at the 2024 ATMOsphere APAC Summit.
“In refrigerated sales ‒ aside from R134a and R404A ‒ R290 and R600a (isobutane) have started to be used as environmentally friendly refrigerants,” Yang said, noting that R600a is mainly used in wine storage cabinets.
