Aside from a small stand-up banner, there was not much to alert attendees of the 2024 IIAR Conference in Orlando, Florida, to Canadian OEM RefPlus’s presence on the exhibition floor. That was by design, though. RefPlus was not at the show to tout its own CO2 (R744) refrigeration equipment but rather to showcase a transcritical rack from Ceptek, a fellow Canadian OEM that it acquired in the summer of 2023.
RefPlus and Ceptek share many similarities. Both began building CO2 refrigeration equipment in the early 2010s. Both are headquartered in Quebec, with RefPlus located in Longueuil and Ceptek in Granby, which are separated by an hour’s drive. However, the two addressed different markets: RefPlus built equipment for the commercial and light industrial sectors, while Ceptek focused on industrial applications.
The differences between the two companies turned out to be what brought them together in the end, according to Mathieu Cardinal, President and CEO of RefPlus.
“The next project for our R&D team was to develop CO2 compressor racks, and that was on the table until an opportunity came along, which was Ceptek,” Cardinal told Marc Chasserot, CEO and Founder of ATMOsphere. ATMOsphere is the publisher of NaturalRefrigerants.com.
While Cardinal said that Ceptek was a smaller outfit, he noted that what the company lacked in size it made up for in experience, having sold racks “coast to coast in Canada” for 15 years. That experience has been well-received by RefPlus’s distribution network, which Cardinal said covers both the U.S. and Canada.
“We started introducing Ceptek to all of our commercial partners, and now demand is booming,” said Cardinal. “We’ve begun renting more space and hiring more people to grow the Ceptek division.”
You can learn more about RefPlus’s acquisition of Ceptek and its growth plans in this exclusive interview, which was filmed on the show floor of the 2024 IIAR Conference.
“We started introducing Ceptek to all of our commercial partners, and now demand is booming.”
Mathieu Cardinal, President and CEO of RefPlus
