GEA fruit storage system cuts peak demand
26th July 2026
GERMANY: GEA has enabled a South African producer of apples and pears to reduce its peak power consumption while expanding its cold storage capabilities with a new controlled-atmosphere facility.
Betko Fresh Produce Pty sought to extend fruit storage to up to 14 months and process approximately 50,000 additional fruit bins annually.
With South Africa’s electricity grid under sustained pressure, GEA faced the challenge of enabling Betko to expand its storage capacity while reducing peak power consumption by 20%.
The new facility, featuring 24 controlled-atmosphere chambers, combines an energy-optimised building design with GEA’s Adaptive Suction Set Point Control, which recalculates the optimal operating point for each individual chamber every 60 seconds.
Betko is one of South Africa’s leading producers of apples and pears, operating farms and packing facilities in the Western Cape. The company farms 1,000 hectares and supplies approximately 65,000 tonnes of fruit annually to markets across Africa, Asia, the EU and the UK.
As Betko’s own production grew and new farms were acquired, the existing facility ran out of both space and power. The solution was to build a new, standalone complex at a farm the company had acquired in Sunnyside, closer to the orchards, where grid capacity was available.
“The starting point of this project was energy optimisation,” explained Shaun Kleb, GEA’s head of project sales southern and eastern Africa at GEA. “We examined every part of the operation for potential energy savings and challenged conventional assumptions about the facility design.”
The creative part of GEA’s approach lay in treating the building, storage layout and refrigeration system as one integrated design challenge rather than optimising the refrigeration plant in isolation. The team identified savings across the building envelope, storage configuration and refrigeration technology while still increasing Betko’s available capacity. The facility was designed for 24 controlled atmosphere (CA) stores, each holding 1,200 bins. Bins are stacked 11 high rather than the industry standard of 10, giving Betko more capacity for the same 5,000m2 footprint. The floors were insulated, which is a first for a CA store of this kind. “We did some high-level calculations, and the payback was within a year,” Kleb said.
At the heart of the system are three GEA Grasso V series ammonia reciprocating compressors, with a fourth identical unit in standby. Variable frequency drives control the operating speed between 500 and 1,500rpm, allowing the plant to ramp up smoothly without power spikes and to run at lower speeds and higher efficiency during the quieter winter months.
Together with high-pressure liquid subcooling, the compressor setup delivered the targeted 20% reduction in peak power consumption.
The GEA Omni system with Adaptive Suction Set Point Control ties the facility together, collecting data from every room, analysing it in real time and recalculating the optimal operating point every 60 seconds.
Data flows to the GEA cloud, giving Betko’s refrigeration manager remote visibility and control across all 24 rooms via mobile phone.
The system also supports dynamic controlled atmosphere storage, in which oxygen setpoints are lowered to extend storage duration further, with sensors monitoring fruit stress levels continuously.
