Belgium: Providing cooling systems worldwide

This is said by Carlo Cuvelie, who started Air.Clima in 1998. That was a while ago, and in any case long enough to develop into perhaps the largest supplier & installer of cooling plants in floriculture. Among the customers are notable names such as FleuraMetz, Agora, Bouquetnet, Adomex, WBE Group, Landgard and most recently the Green Trade Center of Waterdrinker. There Air.Clima will organize a cold storage room of 2,000m2. For the adjacent building of Agora a further 9,000m2 of cooling and also all offices, another 2,000 m2, will be provided with HVAC (a complete package of heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and cooling).

The vision of Air.Clima is simple: to provide the entire cold chain, from the smallest grower to the largest Cash & Carry, with their cooling systems, worldwide. Of course they are not the only ones in this sector, but Air.Clima has a specific signature with which they, in their own words, distinguish themselves. This is the 'cooling ceiling', a patented cooling technique that is used to cool evenly over an area. Closely connected with this is the way in which the humidity of the air can be regulated.

The cooling ceiling is a ceiling with lots of small holes, as Carlo explains. The cold is better distributed over the space: "It remains, as it were, sticking to the ceiling and then drops evenly into the space. Therefore there is no constant draft, making it a lot more pleasant for the people who work in the cold storage while they are also less likely to become ill. The difference between inclement weather and zero degrees weather with sunshine and no wind."

At the same time, the humidity is easily controllable. "The combination of our climate control box and the ceiling allows you to control that humidity much more accurately than with conventional cooling systems," according to Carlo.

"When the customer chooses us, he must afterwards still support his choice", he continues. "So that not only we, but also he is convinced that he has made the right choice. Through our expertise and years of experience, we can look far ahead at things that the customer will probably run into. We, the people with the knowledge of cooling, can help him to work as efficiently as possible and get the highest possible return from the systems that we install. Because on top of that we give a 10-year warranty on our cooling systems, because we have a total package of cooling systems, HVAC and even offer (the placing of) solar panels. Because the customer knows exactly what he will have to spend for cooling over the next 10 years, we distinguish ourselves even more from the competition."

This all occurs in the 3,400m2 building that was erected twelve years ago in Kontich, Belgium. Primarily customers from floriculture - growers, transporters, trading companies, garden centers, auctions - are served, but also projects in the food industry and beyond have been realized. In 2014, for example, the entire cooling system was installed for the institutional kitchen of the renovated Elisabeth Hall of the Antwerp Zoo, a project of which they are still very proud.