It wins prizes and makes life a bit easier for the salespeople: the ICF valve has been very well received on the market.
In the USA, the ICV – and now its successor, the ICF range – helped Danfoss move from being an almost rare supplier to become the leading supplier within the business. Now ICV/ICF valves are supplied to the three largest compressor manufacturers in the USA.
“Customers are literally queuing up to be visited by Danfoss,” project leader Anders Mønsted says, as he assesses the situation.
The valve is used in large refrigeration systems. It was launched in 2004 under the name ICV. At that time, it was awarded the refrigeration industry’s ”AHR Innovation Award”. Now its successor,ICF, has recently been awarded the same prize for 2006 – the fifth consecutive year that Danfoss has won the prize.
The design of the ICV/ICF is based on the principle of toy bricks. Presently,there are four basic versions in the ICF series, but they can be expanded to fit exactly the customer’s needs, in several thousand variants.
An extra advantage for the customer is that the valve – including control units and other equipment – is supplied as one component, not as a package of components. This means that it takes less time to be installed than the traditional valves for industrial refrigeration.
Case Stories
Fresh Fish in Naples
A large cold store warehouse in Naples will be equipped with large ICF valves from Danfoss,even though the owner initially preferred valves from a competing company.
Although this warehouse owner uses valves from another company in other systems, he
was convinced there would be benefits from choosing Danfoss valves for his cold store
warehouses, which will be the distribution warehouses for meat and fish.
“This customer thought it was a wise solution which will make everything less complicated,” says Sales Manager Lorenzo Angolani.
A total of 93 ICF20 valves have been supplied for the system, designed by the Italian
company Sittin, based near Milan.
Chilled Fruits in Holland
Sales engineer Joris Kortstee presented one of his customers with two solutions for a new cold store warehouse that stores fruit and vegetables in Holland: a cheap option using traditional refrigeration valves and a more expensive one using ICF valves.
After much thought, the customer chose the expensive solution – because it would be cheaper in the long run. Just two welds, and the valve is mounted.
To Joris Kortstee, an additional benefit of choosing the complete solution was that, in addition to 150 ICF valves, his customer also chose 600 otherDanfoss components, such as stop valves and filters.
“This would not have happened if we had not had the ICF valve,” he says.
The cold store warehouse is being planned by the company GTI Suez and will be ready in March, with a refrigeration capacity of 2.5 MW.