Belgium's Colruyt Group has announced plans to install cooling installations in its stores that operate on natural propane gas and emit up to 90% fewer greenhouse gases.
With plans to outfit all 360 Colruyt, Okay and Bio-Planet stores in Belgium with the new installations, the retailer is aiming to decrease its total greenhouse gas emissions in the country by 10%.
Project Engineer, Collin Bootsveld commented, “By choosing propane cooling, Colruyt Group is once again taking a big step in realising its own goals for the environment; a 20 per cent decrease of the greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, as relative to 2009.
He further explained that the retailer chose a compact type of propane cooling system that contains 30 times less cooling agent than traditional systems, and allows almost no propane to be lost by leakage.
“Should any propane escape, it will be a thousand times less harmful to the environment than a synthetic cooling agent,” Bootsveld noted.
The first store to have the cooling system installed will be the new Bio-Planet store in Bergen. Bio-Planet Hasselt will be next to get the system in March 2016, and by mid-2016, the goal is to have it installed in all Colruyt and Okay stores.
From 2017 onwards, the old cooling systems in existing stores will be replaced, with the retailer hoping to have converted 90 of their stores by 2020.
© 2015 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Jenny Whelan. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
