Sep 30, 2025

Refrigerated Display Cabinets (RDCs) are essential for modern food retail, combining refrigeration performance with visibility and accessibility. Critical to ensuring the safety of refrigerated and frozen products, RDCs can be found anywhere where food and drink is served or sold, from supermarkets and convenience stores, to bakeries, ice cream parlours and foodservice environments. The Eurovent Certified Performance programme for Refrigerated Display Cabinets (RDCs) plays a key role in proving independently verified data for decision makers, crucial in making sustainable, reliable product choices.

Why do we need RDC certification?

When buying a RDC the decision goes far beyond just picking the right size unit. As RDCs are used for the preservation of a variety of foodstuffs or beverages, it’s vital that systems work effectively and reliably to ensure food safety and product quality. Significantly, RDCs are some of the biggest energy consumers in food retail. Therefore, energy efficiency is becoming a key factor in product purchase decisions, due to the impact on sustainability goals and operating expenses (OPEX). Aspects such as customer experience also needs consideration, as does ease of cleaning and maintenance, environmental impact (refrigerants) and regulatory compliance. This all means that product decisions must be carefully thought through.

Decision makers need accurate product performance data on a variety of characteristics including:

• The type of cabinet (application and display style)
• External and internal dimensions and layout
• Energy consumption
• Refrigerant type
• Temperature performance
• Display features, such as lighting and glass type.

It is also useful to have information on:

• Noise levels
• Ease of use and cleaning
• Serviceability and maintenance.

If performance information is incorrect, it can lead to poor system selection, with decision makers unknowingly selecting products that will not perform as advertised.

Underperforming RDCs can:

• Fail to deliver the cooling capacity required or deliver unstable temperatures and hot spots, putting food safety and quality at risk
• Consume excess energy, raising running costs
• Create more environmental damage and incur a larger carbon footprint
• Be more prone to faults and breakdown, or excess noise as they will have to work harder to reach desired temperatures
• Not provide the internal storage capacity required
• Not meet regulatory compliance.

Third-party evaluation via Eurovent Certification removes this risk and avoids greenwashing, ensuring that products perform as advertised.

What products are included?

The Eurovent Certified Performance programme scope for Refrigerated Display Cabinets (RDC) applies to 100 basic model groups divided in five (5) pre-defined categories and basic model groups for both integral refrigerated display cabinets and remote refrigerated display cabinets. The five different product types include:

• Remote units: semi-verticals and verticals (with doors)
• Multi-deckers
• Islands
• Service counters
• Combi freezers.

2 sub programmes include:

• Remote Refrigerated Display Cabinets (RRDC) using R744 (CO2)
• Integral Refrigerated Display Cabinets (IRDC) equipped with air-cooled condensing unit using natural refrigerants or blends with GWP lower or equal to 150
• At least two references per basic model group representing 80% of sales shall be declared.

What is certified?

For the admission procedure, sampling and test of one unit and audit of one factory.

For the surveillance procedure, sampling and test of two units and audit of two factories maximum each year.

Main certified characteristics and acceptance criteria includes:

• Warmest product temperature (laboratory conditions): +0.5 °C
• Coldest (chilled) product temperature (laboratory conditions): -0.5 °C
• Heat extraction (laboratory conditions) [kWh/24h] (RRDC): +10 % (RRDC)
• Evaporating temperature (laboratory conditions) (RRDC): -1 °C (RRDC)
• DEC [kWh/24h]: +5 % (RRDC), +10 % (IRDC)
• REC [kWh/24h]: +10 % (RRDC)
• TEC [kWh/24h]: +10 %
• TDA [m²]: -3 %
• Energy Efficiency Index EEI (laboratory condition): Failed if TEC is failed
• Specific daily Electrical Energy Consumption: Failed if TEC is failed (IRDC)
• The measured M-package temperature class shall equal to or inside the claimed class, with an acceptance criterion of : +/-0.5 °C.

What are the testing standards?

RDCs certified under this Eurovent Certified Performance programme are tested to:

• EN ISO 29953 and amendments.

You can find out more about the certification rules and requirements in the Technical Certification Rules and Certification Manual on our Eurovent Certified Performance programme for Refrigerated Display Cabinets page.

Why choose Eurovent Certified Performance?

Eurovent Certified Performance for Refrigerated Display Cabinets offers a comprehensive, independent and impartial certification programme, which goes far beyond laboratory testing alone.

This programme includes:

• Independent laboratory tests
• Factory audits
• Full analysis and validation of all supplied data (including marketing materials)
• Surveillance process to ensure continued conformity.

Evaluation protocols are uniform to ensure the certification process is fair and equal for all manufacturers. Eurovent Certification:

• Evaluates RDCs according to the same criteria
• Expresses results in the same unit of measurement, regardless of the country where the products are manufactured or marketed
• Ensures all products within the programme go through exactly the same certification, auditing and surveillance process
• Impartiality standards are kept high as manufacturers and laboratories have no direct contact, keeping the process clear of any bias
• Additionally, products to be tested can be taken from the production line or factory stock, ensuring the product tested is exactly the same as those leaving the production line.

As all RDCs go through the same process, decision makers can directly compare this data when making product decisions, via the free to access certified product directory.

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