Worcester, UK: Hultsteins has appointed Eco Truck Refrigeration to handle sales in the east of the UK.
Eco Truck Refrigeration will sell Hultsteins’ diesel-free refrigeration products including Ecogen, its hybrid-power generator, pictured above.
Graham Usher, managing director, Eco Truck Fridge, said: “I am delighted to be joining forces with Hultsteins and helping to promote these long established, well proven products in the UK and Ireland.
“Hultsteins’ wide range, of ‘one-engine’ sustainable solutions, offers significant cost and emissions savings which, until recent times, have not been widely available to operators here in the UK,” he said.
Stephen Maile, sales director, Hultsteins UK, who invented the Ecogen system, said: “Hultsteins’ sustainable solutions are working for retailers and operators in several European countries and we are very glad that Eco Truck Fridge is on board to continue our good work here in the UK and Ireland.”
“We decided to keep the sales operation separate to manufacturing and service which, under my control, allows us to concentrate on production and technical support in the UK while continuing to build on European sales in partnership with Hultsteins in Sweden,” Maile said.
Hultsteins UK and Eco Truck Fridge will provide a better managed service to current and future Hultsteins customers, especially in London he said.
Maile predicts increased interest systems such as Hultsteins make. “The long-standing rebate on ‘red’ diesel for use in fridge engines changes in 2022 when the duty will increase from 11.1ppl to the full tax rate of 57.7ppl,” he said.
“Temperature-controlled transport operators will therefore need to absorb the impact and for any operator, with standard trailer fridge engines consuming 3-5 litres of red diesel per unit per hour, the fridge operators doing 2500 fridge engine hours per annum will be hit with additional costs of £5700 extra for each trailer they run. Therefore, the potential fuel saving and extended fridge life, coupled with substantial reductions in carbon and harmful emissions are substantial,” he said.
The Ecogen can be retrofitted to any truck with a power take off and will drive any type of conventional diesel fridge with electric standby, from any of the major manufacturers. It does not replace the existing fridge but works in tandem with the fridge to provide a cheaper and less polluting power source – generating a constant 400-volt, 3-phase electrical power to the same standard as the mains supply.
With this typical application, operators can expect to extend the life of existing fridge units, while subject to the annual amount of running hours, potentially seeing a return on investment in under 18 months, Hultsteins says.
