Keeping the food in the most pristine condition is the primary requirement for the food processing and cold storage industry. To make this happen, they need cuttingedge industrial refrigeration systems that absolutely prevent food spoilage while at the same time save on electricity consumption and enable expected productivity.

Meeting this need for some of the leading food and beverage production and cold storage facilities is VaCom Technologies—a controls manufacturer with over three decades of experience in refrigeration control systems and projects.

“At VaCom, we utilize our industry-leading knowledge and experience in refrigeration and energy efficiency to provide the most advanced industrial refrigeration control systems for the food and beverage and cold storage industries,” states Rigoberto Giron, managing director of VaCom Technologies.

VaCom is transitioning from a traditional controls company to a full industrial cooling systems integration provider. This transformation is expedited by BITZER, a leading manufacturer of compressors, condensers, and pressure vessels for refrigeration and air conditioning applications. Through this acquisition, BITZER intends to expand its capabilities in North America while giving VaCom’s clients access to fully integrated refrigeration systems.

Every facility is built differently. Their cooling requirements differ depending on the product type and production capacity. VaCom considers this when tailoring its turnkey implementation projects. The engineers at VaCom are experienced in central systems, distributed architectures, designs, and commonly specified PLC brands used in today’s food and beverage and cold storage facilities. Most of the hardware is commercially supported and non-proprietary, and open-source and maintainable system software is leveraged in the installed systems.

The alignment of the turnkey equipment with the client’s refrigeration and cooling requirements is assured, owing to VaCom’s meticulous onboarding process. The company gathers all the information about the client’s needs and engineers the system from scratch. By sourcing components from partners and building them from the ground up, the company ensures that the implemented system can meet current and long-term refrigeration needs and business objectives.

In partnership with contractors and OEMs, VaCom also provides compressor control panels, heat rejection panels, transfer pumps, and recirculation vessels to control processes at the machine and supervisory levels. Once a system is installed by one of their partners, VaCom turns over those systems to preferred contractors with multiyear service agreements with clients. The contractors then make sure that these systems work well and are capable of servicing it as often as an end user wants.

Upon installation of a refrigeration system and throughout its life cycle, VaCom ensures proper performance by monitoring it through is supervisory and machine-level controls. Its proprietary energy dashboard augments the capabilities of industrial refrigeration and cooling systems. Not only does it monitor system and component level performance by continuously gathering data to enable clients to get an informed perspective on the minute workings of the system, but it also translates this data into power consumption and energy savings by constantly adjusting how a system works through its proven control strategies and algorithms The true power of this capability becomes more obvious when multiple facilities within the same company standardize their control systems to have a corporate level view of how refrigeration assets are being utilized.

At VaCom, we utilize our industry-leading knowledge and experience in refrigeration and energy efficiency to provide the most advanced industrial refrigeration control systems for the food and beverage and cold storage industries

VaCom’s capabilities can be highlighted through a recent engagement, where a client needed to upgrade their refrigeration system to the newest standard. The challenge was essentially to upgrade the old R22 system to a lower GWP system and guarantee the facility’s safety. As a result, the client reduced 55,000 pounds of R22 to 5000 pounds of ammonia. VaCom developed and sourced a new design, where they brought in new compression technology utilizing ammonia, carbon dioxide as brine, and glycol for process cooling. This conformed to the client’s safety and efficiency requirements. VaCom supervisory control and machine-level controls were also set up as an added benefit for the client. Through this endto- end approach, VaCom was able to cater to clients’ requests in a fully customizable manner-.

In the ongoing industry effort to transition to lower-GWP refrigerants, VaCom is helping clients shift to less harmful and ecologically sustainable refrigerants. It is playing a key factor in the success of their client’s operations—making industrial refrigeration systems one of the best value investments they ever make. Moving ahead with end-user-centric approaches and a unique understanding of industrial refrigeration systems, VaCom is striving to adopt newer technologies and expand its robust service portfolio for existing and new customers.