Cooltech said it raised the new capital from both its historic shareholders and two new investors: Demeter Partners and 123Venture. The magnetic refrigeration technology is said to have a wide range of applications in both the refrigeration and air conditioning markets — commercial, industrial and domestic refrigeration, and air conditioning of vehicles and buildings.
“Reducing the cost of creating ‘cold’ in its various forms has become an indispensible element of our modern global society, where its production and use is currently accompanied by pollution and an energy consumption that needs to be reduced,” said Sophie Paturle, partner at Demeter Partners. “In eliminating completely the need for [refrigerant] gas and reducing by half the electricity required for an equal performance in a classic system, the magnetic refrigeration technology certainly appears to be the only valid response to-date to face both environmental and economic challenges.”
“Following an in-depth market study, we selected the industrial refrigerated counter sector as a first market entry point for commercial applications,” said Christian Muller, CEO and founder of Cooltech. “Production of cold in the supermarket chains represents up to 40 percent of the electricity consumed, in addition to the 15 percent of the total related logistic costs, hence magnetic refrigeration will generate an important economic advantage to our future client base. Followed with the supplying of the hybrid and electric vehicle sectors, which has battery performance issues leading to limitations in terms of autonomy, which is even further reduced by 30 percent if air conditioning is also functioning. The magneto caloric technology — with an inherent defrost capacity due to reversible functionality — appears to be one of the key facilitating technologies for the development of electric vehicles into mass market product, while equally applicable to hybrid vehicles, where it will significantly improve both the autonomy and ecological footprint. This, to cite only the two first markets we are going to target.”
“Cooltech Applications is the first company to have created an operational system where the performance required for industrialization has been proved and hence the only company actually engaged in commercializing a magneto-caloric thermal machine. This machine has been conceived to be both simple in terms of architecture and modular, allowing a competitive unit price for the numerous potential applications while equally meeting the client-based specifications, in particular temperature and power,” added Marc Guittet, partner at 123Venture.
For more information, visit www.weenter.com.
Publication date: 6/3/2013
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