The Kirby brand, which is over 70 years strong, has certainly stood the test of time, surviving in a changing industry that is becoming increasingly saturated with 'copycat' low cost alternatives.
For Heatcraft, the secret behind Kirby's successful longevity is a commitment to deliver consistently reliable, quality, fully-featured innovative product solutions that perform year after year.
These days the Kirby brand delivers an unsurpassed range of precisely engineered refrigeration solutions specifically for Australia, New Zealand and nearby territories. It continues to be empowered by Heatcraft local manufacturing and product development, supported by the global resources of Heatcraft Worldwide Refrigeration and Lennox International.
Heatcraft Australia's refrigeration equipment business manager, Brett Hedge, said the company is producing innovative, compressorised Kirby rack systems and customised solutions that offer maximum system efficiency through advanced compressor technologies.
“The diversity of engineered to order and customised product being designed and assembled at the Heatcraft Milperra site, is testament to our capability,” Hedge said.
Heatcraft Australia recently designed a unique Kirby refrigeration rack system with Dave Redden of Refrigeration Innovations P/L for use at a Victorian supermarket.
“A partnership with Emerson Australia provided the opportunity to develop the racks with Copeland digital compressor technologies and sound shells to the high stage (medium temperature) compressors,” Hedge said.
“The system which was completely designed and manufactured by the engineering and production teams at Milperra is an example of the design and innovation available in the Kirby rack range through Heatcraft Australia.”
Other unique Kirby solutions being manufactured at the Milperra site include central plant HVAC packs, water cooled semi-hermetic condensing units, high efficiency integrated VSD solutions and rack systems complete with integral switchboard and control systems.
Heatcraft Australia’s primary manufacturing facility is located in Wuxi, China.
“All Heatcraft Australia product manufactured at Wuxi is designed in Australia to Australian and New Zealand standards,” Hedge said.
The manufacturing facility is wholly owned and operated by Heatcraft Worldwide Refrigeration; the engineering, manufacturing and quality assessment is certified to ISO9001 and controls are in strict compliance with International and Australian standards.
The facility has the ability to performance test refrigeration systems of up to 200kW capacity.
With the growth of the Lennox International and Heatcraft Refrigeration Product global operations, the Lennox India Technology Centre (LITC) was expanded in 2014.
LITC supports the Heatcraft Milperra Product Development and Research team with robust design and analysis capabilities, including; Computer Aided Design (CAD), Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) during the various stages of the product development life cycle.
While the local Heatcraft Australia engineering and product development team has its own testing capabilities, it is also well supported by the recently expanded testing facilities at Stone Mountain in the United States.
The Stone Mountain high tech facility includes a global laboratory and allows for more robust equipment and complete systems testing using realistic environmental conditions. This ensures products are designed to the highest quality standards and in compliance with regulatory requirements.
Heatcraft has also invested locally to support customers using Kirby products. The company continues to invest in its account management, field support and the wholesale network and notably recently opened the Technical Excellence Centre to support the one step distribution capabilities.
The Technical Excellence Centre is unique to the HVAC&R industry and is manned by a team of experienced Sales and Application Engineers with over 100 years of combined experience. Heatcraft also offer their customers smart selection tools via smart@ccess free of charge.
Heatcraft Australia has also appointed Field Engineers le to assist with specific project engineering needs. For a Kirby specialist contact Heatcraft Australia on 13 23 50.