Cold Storage Equipment for Thailand's Food Export Industry: Refrigerant Rules, Approvals and Sourcing Checklist

Sourcing cold storage equipment for a Thai food export plant is five separate procurement packages, not one purchase: the insulated envelope, the refrigeration plant, the air-and-defrost system, the floor and civil works, and the temperature-recording system. A Chinese "cold room" quotation normally covers the first three. The package that stops your export shipment is the fifth. The package that strands your asset is the refrigerant inside the second — Thailand must cut HCFC consumption by 67.5% against its baseline in 2025 and to zero in 2030, yet R-22 is still quoted as a normal spec on Chinese B2B listings in 2026, including four live listings in our own catalogue.

What a "Cold Room Quote" Actually Covers

| Package | Usually in a Chinese quote | Who else you need | |---|---|---| | Insulated envelope (panels, doors, curtains) | Yes | Local installer; your fire insurer | | Refrigeration plant (compressor, condenser, evaporator, controls) | Yes | Local refrigeration contractor for commissioning | | Air distribution and defrost | Partly — often generic | Designer who knows your door traffic | | Floor build-up, sub-floor heating, drainage | Almost never | Civil contractor | | Temperature recording, calibration, validation | Almost never | Your QA team and your customer's auditor |

Buyers compare quotes on packages one and two because those are the only ones itemised. The risk sits in three, four and five.

The Refrigerant Decides Whether the Plant Is Serviceable in 2035

Thailand is an Article 5 (developing country) Party to the Montreal Protocol. Its HCFC baseline is the 2013 freeze level of 927.6 ODP tonnes, with committed cuts of 10% in 2015, 35% in 2020, **67.5% in 2025 and 100% in 2030**, plus a servicing allowance averaging 2.5% per year through 2030–2040. The Department of Industrial Works (DIW) implements this and administers the import quotas. R-22 is an HCFC, so it sits directly on that schedule.

HFCs are on a longer clock, not an exemption. Under the Kigali Amendment, Thailand — in Article 5 Group 1 — froze HFC consumption in 2024, then reduces 10% by 2029, 30% by 2035, 50% by 2040 and 80% by 2045. A store commissioned this year on R-404A or R-410A will still be running when those steps bite.

**First-party data, audited 23 August 2026:** across all 798 published listings in our own product database, only ten declare a refrigerant at all — R-410A on five, **R-22 on four**, R-407C on one. Eight mention R-22 somewhere in their specification block. **Zero state a GWP figure.** A live example is a [20HP air-cooled industrial chiller](/en/products/ali-store-20hp-air-cooled-industrial-chiller) reading "Refrigerant: R22"; a [WEIYU refrigerated spot cooler](/en/products/weiyu-temperflow) reads "R410A". Neither is wrong to publish — it is what the factory builds — but it shows what a catalogue will and will not tell you. Nobody volunteers the GWP number. Put it in the PO: refrigerant designation, GWP, and written confirmation that the compressor and oil are qualified for the intended replacement fluid.

Your Buyer's Market Sets the Temperature, Not Your Supplier

For EU-bound product, quick-frozen foodstuffs must be held at **−18 °C or colder at all points in the product**, with only brief upward fluctuations of no more than 3 °C during transport (Directive 89/108/EEC). Regulation (EC) No 37/2005 governs the monitoring and recording of temperatures in transport, warehousing and storage of quick-frozen foodstuffs. Chilled fishery products are to be kept as close as possible to 0 °C under the 852/2004 and 853/2004 hygiene framework.

Two consequences buyers discover late:

• **A cold store is an approved establishment in its own right.** EU imports are authorised only from vessels and establishments — processing plants, freezer vessels *and cold stores* — inspected and listed by the exporting country's competent authority. A new store bolted onto an EU-listed Thai plant does not inherit that plant's listing.
• **The auditor inspects the record, not the compressor.** Specify the recorder, sensor placement, calibration traceability and data-retention period in the purchase order. Retrofitting a compliant recording system after commissioning is how plants lose a season.

Thailand's Department of Fisheries issued hygiene standards covering EU-bound supply chains, effective 13 October 2025. Thai seafood exports to EU member states reached 86,019 tonnes worth over THB 14.03 billion in 2024.

Storage Duty and Freezing Duty Are Different Machines

The commonest sizing error is buying holding capacity and expecting freezing performance. Holding pallets at −18 °C is a modest steady load. Pulling a warm batch down to a −18 °C core is a large transient load driven by batch weight, entry temperature, packaging, stacking arrangement and the pull-down hours you can tolerate. Undersize it and you freeze slowly — a food-safety and quality problem, not just a scheduling one. Oversize it and you have paid for idle capital.

Write the duty into the enquiry, not the machine: kilograms per batch, entry temperature, target core temperature, hours available. Then ask for **the heat load calculation sheet**, not a model number. A supplier who cannot produce one has not sized anything.

Defrost needs the same treatment in a tropical plant. Every door opening admits warm humid air that freezes onto evaporator, door frame and floor, so defrost strategy must match your real door traffic and humidity — not a default carried over from a temperate project.

Two Line Items Nobody Quotes: The Slab and the Fire Class

**The slab.** A freezer floor at −18 °C will freeze the ground beneath it unless the build-up includes sub-floor heating or a ventilated void. Omit that and the ground heaves and lifts the slab — practitioners report failures appearing anywhere from a couple of months to a decade after commissioning. It is a civil works item, outside the panel supplier's scope. Ask explicitly who is designing it.

**The fire class.** PIR cores char under flame while standard PUR tends to melt and drip; the two typically classify differently under EN 13501-1, and property insurers commonly reference FM 4880 approval for cold store panels. Much of the comparison material online is panel-vendor literature rather than independent testing, so instead of trusting a brochure, get the **classification report and test certificate for the panel type you are buying**, plus your insurer's requirement in writing, before you order.

The Running Cost Beats the Quote Difference

For May–August 2026 the Thai base tariff is 3.78 THB/unit plus an Ft of 0.1623 THB/unit — about 3.95 THB/unit before 7% VAT. Large time-of-use industrial customers pay roughly 3.80 off-peak and 5.27 on-peak; effective factory rates land around 4.10–5.50 THB/kWh depending on category, TOU window and demand charge.

Worked arithmetic — **stated assumptions, not measurements**: a plant averaging 30 kW around the clock uses 720 kWh/day, roughly 1.18 million THB a year at a blended 4.50 THB/kWh. A 10% efficiency gap between two quotes is then about 118,000 THB a year, or 1.18 million THB over a ten-year life. Get the real figure from your supplier and redo it. Separately, shifting pull-down and blast-freezing batches from on-peak to off-peak saves roughly 28% on that block of energy at the rates above.

Before You Sign

• Refrigerant designation, GWP, and compressor/oil compatibility with the replacement fluid, in the PO
• Heat load calculation sheet for both holding duty and pull-down duty
• Named scope owner for slab build-up, sub-floor heating and drainage
• Panel classification report plus your insurer's written requirement
• Temperature recorder specification, calibration traceability and data retention
• Whether the new store needs its own establishment approval for your export market
• Certificates verified against the issuing body — method in our [certification checklist](/en/news/quality-certifications-chinese-equipment) and [supplier audit guide](/en/news/verify-chinese-equipment-supplier-audit)
• HS classification agreed with your freight forwarder in advance, Form E prepared for ACFTA preference

Cold storage is the one purchase where the cheapest quote and the lowest total cost are almost never the same machine. Settle the load calculation, the refrigerant, the slab and the recorder before price. Browse related [food processing equipment](/en/products?industry=food-processing) — [vacuum packaging](/en/products/lianlian-vac-large-pump-double-nozzle), [stretch-film vacuum packaging](/en/products/ali-store-continuous-stretch-vacuum-packaging-machine), a [frozen meat metal detector](/en/products/ali-store-frozen-meat-beef-chicken-food-metal-detector-machine) — or our [food equipment sourcing guide](/en/news/food-processing-equipment-china-asean), [China sourcing](/en/china-sourcing) and [contact](/en/contact).

*Regulatory schedules, approved-establishment lists and tariff rates change. Verify current requirements with DIW, the Thai FDA or the Department of Fisheries, and with your destination market's competent authority, before signing.*