SandenVendo America debuts line of HC vending machines

Earlier this week SandenVendo America – a Dallas, Texas-based manufacturer of commercial refrigeration and heating equipment – introduced a line of vending machines with hydrocarbon refrigeration systems, its first for the North American market. The company’s other units use CO₂.

The hydrocarbon refrigeration systems serve two types of SandenVendo America products: glass- front vending machines and stack-style vending machines.

“Those two product lines carry a total of four different models and probably 25 variations of those four models,” SandenVendo America CEO and President Mike Weisser told hydrocarbons21.

“Sixty percent of everything we produce now has the ability to be produced in hydrocarbon if our customer chooses.”

Weisser says that customer trends are clearly moving away from high-GWP HFC refrigerants, which was a large motivation for the company to move to hydrocarbons.

“The writing is on the wall, clearly, for HFCs,” said Weisser. “Our only solution prior to hydrocarbons was CO₂, and we felt it very important to offer our customers and our markets the ability to choose which is the best natural refrigerant for their abilities, for their market, for their region.”

The new R290 vending machines – a demonstration of SandenVendo’s corporate climate commitment – are all cUL listed (meaning they meet Canadian and U.S. UL standards) and all meet or exceed U.S. Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency ENERGY STAR requirements.

“Our company is committed to taking steps to ensure that we leave the environment a better place than when we found it,” said Weisser. “We believe that that requires our engagement with natural refrigerants.”

“R290 is safe and abundant,” Weisser added, “with a zero ozone depleting potential and a global warming potential (GWP) less than 4. Compared to HFC R134a’s GWP of 1,430, it’s clear that R290 is the sustainable choice of the future.”

SandenVendo America isn’t new to natural refrigerants. Its portfolio has included CO₂-based systems for companies like Coca-Cola since 2012.

The company also develops equipment for many Fortune 500 companies, including PepsiCo, 7-Eleven, and Red Bull. Those corporations, according to Weisser, are increasingly trending towards higher environmental standards. SandenVendo, Weisser adds, is nothing if not customer-oriented.

“While no one company has come to us and said ‘you must do this’ or ‘you have to do that’ we just see it as a self-serving industry trend,” Weisser said. “It’s in our best interest to provide the environmental products – that we want to provide anyway – that our customers are trending towards.”