Which temperature class is a display fridge tested in?

What the energy law covers

The instrument is the Greenhouse and Energy Minimum Standards (Refrigerated Cabinets) Determination 2024, which revokes and replaces the 2020 determination of the same name. Its definitions are where any question about a particular unit starts. A refrigerated cabinet is a device that consists of an insulated cabinet with an opening, whether or not the opening has a lid or a door; is capable of attaining and maintaining a specified temperature inside that cabinet within a range that overlaps -18°C to +10°C; and is designed primarily for storage, display, or both, of chilled or frozen foodstuffs. The instrument names five types of refrigerated cabinet, and the two that matter to a shop are the display cabinet and the storage cabinet.

A refrigerated display cabinet, which the instrument shortens to RDC, is designed for storage and display of, and access by consumers to, chilled or frozen items in a retail environment; scooping cabinets and ice cream freezer cabinets are outside that definition. A refrigerated storage cabinet, or RSC, is an integral cabinet that is not one of those. Integral means the condensing unit is designed to be housed within the cabinet or directly attached to it. The instrument says a cabinet is an RDC or an RSC, whichever the words fit, regardless of the environment it is actually used in, industrial, commercial or domestic.

Two scope notes are worth reading before any class is quoted. The instrument does not apply to RSCs that are designed to be remote, and the definitions above turn on a cabinet rather than a room. On the wider energy program, the National Environmental Protection Agency says Australia has minimum energy performance standards for products imported or manufactured here, and lists air conditioners and refrigerators and freezers among the products those standards are mandatory for.

The classes beside the cold line

The instrument defines an M-package temperature class as a classification of refrigerated cabinets by the temperatures of the warmest and coldest test packages, known as M-packages, recorded during the temperature test defined in the relevant test standard. An RDC other than a drinks cabinet must meet the requirements of one of nine classes when it is tested in accordance with ISO 23953-2:2023 at a test room climate class of 3: M0, M, M1, M2, H1, H2, L1, L2 and L3. The table below sets each class, with the instrument's own figures, beside the food law's line.

Which test each type of cabinet is put through

The instrument pairs the classes with the tests in its own table, by type of cabinet. The column headings below are its own words: the class the product must meet one of, the test standard it is tested in, and the test room climate class.

Read from a buyer's seat, the table answers "what was this cabinet tested as" for every common cabinet in a shop: an open display case, a glass-door display fridge, a storage cabinet in a back room, an upright freezer, and the scooping cabinets that sit in ice cream shops. Two cabinet types in the list carry their own test conditions rather than the display cabinet's list of nine: an ice cream freezer cabinet is tested to ISO 22043 and a scooping cabinet to EN 16838:2019.

What a test class tells a buyer

A class is a test condition, and it is worth keeping the two laws in their own columns. The food law's line is a duty on the business: potentially hazardous food is stored under temperature control, which the Code defines as 5°C or below or 60°C or above, and FSANZ puts the working figure at 5°C or colder. The class is where the cabinet's warmest and coldest test packages sat during its temperature test.

Put the two side by side and one comparison falls out for a buyer choosing between cabinets: which class the cabinet was tested in, and whether that class keeps its warmest test package at or below the food law's line. On the classes above, M0 and M1 are the two whose warmest test package is at or below +5°C, which is the line; M, M2, H1 and H2 are tested warmer than it; L1, L2 and L3 are frozen-temperature classes.

What the comparison does not say is anything about a cabinet's behaviour in a particular shop. The class is the condition of the temperature test, run at the climate class the instrument names, and a shop floor is not a test room. Nothing in the two laws makes a class a promise; it is a described and checkable condition, which is exactly what makes it useful in a specification.

One more line matters when a display cabinet is chosen for food that has to be kept cold: a cabinet is an RDC or an RSC by its definition, whatever the environment it ends up in, so the class travels with the equipment and not with the room.

Minimum standards

Classes sit inside a wider scheme. The National Environmental Protection Agency says Australia has minimum energy performance standards for products imported or manufactured here, and that those standards are mandatory for certain products, including air conditioners and refrigerators and freezers. For refrigerated cabinets, the instrument on this page is the 2024 determination, which replaced the 2020 one and sets the classes above for the cabinets it defines.

The food temperature the cabinet will have to hold is a separate question, and the working answer is on the scale beside this guide: 5°C or colder for the food the law calls potentially hazardous. Cool room temperature is the guide for that line.