New Migros CO₂ integrated supermarket opens in Switzerland

Migros Ticino has opened a new supermarket in Riazzino (in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland) that boasts an integrated CO₂ transcritical booster system with mechanical subcooling. 

Migros Ticino is part of Swiss retailer Migros, which operates in different cooperatives across Switzerland. Of the 700 supermarkets in Migros’s portfolio, 411 were equipped with CO2 transcritical systems by the end of 2017.

The Riazzino installation was designed and realised by Biaggini Frigoriferi, a Swiss-Italian manufacturer of CO₂ racks. Biaggini’s ‘TotalEnergy’ system meets the energy requirements in terms of refrigeration and HVAC in the 1,700m² store, which opened in February. 

Eliwell by Schneider Electric provided the electronic devices used to manage and control the system, while Italian firms Dorin and LU-VE provided the CO₂ compressor and the customised gas cooler respectively.

The booster system is composed of a heat pump section (50 kW) and an HVAC one (70 kW).

“Positive temperature refrigerated cabinets and display cases have a dedicated area of 50 linear metres, while that for freezers with negative temperature measures 20 linear metres,” said Luca Rossi, project manager at Biaggini. In addition, “the installation hosts three cold rooms with positive temperature and one with negative temperature”. 

Thanks to a sophisticated bypass mechanism, the same compressors that in winter ensure the correct heating of the store are used in summer for air conditioning. The innovative system installed in Riazzino also boasts heat recovery technology, potentially allowing the system to meet the heating and cooling needs of the store simultaneously.

The new Migros store represents an important step for the diffusion of innovative natural refrigerant-based applications in the Alpine country, where integrated CO₂ systems are becoming increasingly more numerous.