STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. - Heatcraft Worldwide Refrigeration unveiled its new Innovation Center during a grand opening event attended by a cross section of customers, industry experts, trade media, and local officials. The state-of-the-art facility highlights the company's more than 125 years of refrigeration expertise with global innovative products, training services, and high-tech laboratory all designed to provide added customer value.

"The opening of the Heatcraft Innovation Center marks an exciting time for our company as it will further strengthen our capabilities of providing best-in-class refrigeration equipment and complete systems to our customers," said Larry Golen, vice president and general manager, Heatcraft North America. "In addition to being a place where our latest global innovations can be showcased, the facility will serve as a strategic resource for our customers in product development, testing and training."

The new development center includes a 15,000-square-foot expansion of the existing 30,000 square-foot laboratory. The Heatcraft Innovation Center includes an equipment and systems showroom, a training facility, and an expanded global laboratory. The showroom displays more than 60 refrigeration solutions exemplifying the extensive breadth of Heatcraft global innovation across a wide variety of markets including food retail, foodservice, cold storage, and industrial cooling. The 3,500 square-foot training facility housed within the Innovation Center contains fully operational refrigeration systems designed to create an effective hands-on learning environment for beginners to those with advanced technical skills. Finally, the expanded global lab with locations in both the Stone Mountain and Columbus, Ga. operations will allow for more robust equipment and complete systems testing using realistic environmental conditions ensuring products are up to the highest of quality standards and in compliance with regulatory requirements.

Upon entering the Heatcraft Innovation Center, visitors will experience a realistic food retail environment as the showroom boasts impressive replicas of a supermarket and restaurant kitchen exhibiting the company's latest energy-efficient products and systems. Refrigerated display cases are featured fully merchandised and divided into produce, bakery, frozen foods, dairy, meat, and convenience departments. A variety of refrigeration systems are also on display in a mechanical room setting including innovative products like the recently launched Slim Contour Unit Cooler, the refrigeration remote control monitoring system, the environmentally-friendly Microchannel Air-Cooled Condenser platform, and the GreenChill-awarded CO2 refrigeration system.