20ft Refrigerated Container

The standard portable coolroom. Twenty feet of insulated, temperature-controlled space that arrives on a truck and works the day it lands.

The workhorse of cold storage

A 20ft reefer will hold anywhere from deep frozen to chilled, set on a digital controller and maintained automatically. Insulated walls, floor and ceiling, a T-bar floor that lets air circulate underneath the load, and a refrigeration unit built into the front wall.

For most businesses this is the sweet spot: enough capacity to matter, small enough to site, and cheap enough compared with building a coolroom that the decision usually makes itself.

Uses

Produce storage on farms. Overflow cold storage for supermarkets and butchers. Seafood handling. Brewery and beverage storage. Pharmaceutical and laboratory cold chain. Event and festival catering.

What to establish before buying

Power supply — most 20ft reefers need three-phase. Ambient conditions — a unit working in full Australian sun in summer works considerably harder than the same unit in a shed. Level ground, because compressors and drainage both dislike being out of level.

Service matters

Refrigeration needs maintenance. Ask about the unit’s history when you enquire, and budget for periodic servicing. A reefer that is never serviced fails, usually with a full load inside it.

Before committing to a 20ft refrigerated container, confirm what electrical supply exists where it will stand. Power is the thing that derails these purchases.