The loudest room in a seafood plant is rarely the fillet line.
It’s the mechanical room where compressors thrum behind painted piping, where condenser fans spin with the steady insistence of a metronome, and where the plant’s most important ingredient is manufactured on-site: cold. That cold keeps product safe, preserves quality, and buys time. It also quietly becomes one of the plant’s biggest cost centers and, increasingly, one of its biggest climate decisions. This is why industrial refrigeration energy efficiency has become such a vital focus for modern processors.
Pacific Seafood hints at that “quiet” reality in its 2024 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report, noting that in 2024 it “cut water and energy consumption across our facilities” while pursuing long-term efficiency changes through programs like its Energy Trust of Oregon partnership. The same report describes its Clackamas facility participating in Energy Trust of Oregon for the second year and building an internal team “to drive long-term changes,” and adds that Pacific Bio Products–Warrenton signed on for 2025 to work on boiler efficiency improvements.
But “energy efficiency” in processing isn’t a single project it’s an ecosystem of choices. And the most consequential of those choices cluster around refrigeration and the machines that make it possible.
Why the Cold Matters More Than You Think?
It’s a Safety System and a Power System
Industrial refrigeration is so widespread in U.S. manufacturing that the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings program estimates process cooling and industrial refrigeration (including chillers) account for ~5.7% of total U.S. industrial energy consumption. That’s not “seafood-specific” it’s a measure of how much electricity and fuel the economy spends just to move heat around.
Zoom into food, and refrigeration’s dominance becomes more intuitive: it runs 24/7, it fights ambient heat, and it multiplies losses when doors open, warm product arrives, or airflow is poorly controlled. One industry supplier (Danfoss) estimates refrigeration accounts for about 35% of the total energy bill in a typical food processing facility, and about 54% in cold storage. (As vendor estimates, treat them as directional not universal but they align with what plant engineers tend to say: refrigeration is often the big one.)
It’s Also a Refrigerant Choice With Real Climate Stakes
While hardware performance is vital, industrial refrigeration energy efficiency is only half the climate equation. The other half is what refrigerant you’re running and whether it stays in the pipes.
The EPA notes that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are greenhouse gases with global warming potentials hundreds to thousands of times more potent than CO₂. So a plant can buy efficient equipment, then lose climate ground through leaks from a high-GWP refrigerant circuit.
That’s one reason many industrial facilities have historically leaned on ammonia systems. DOE notes that more than 90% of industrial refrigeration in the U.S. is provided by mechanical systems using low-temperature ammonia as the refrigerant. Ammonia isn’t risk-free it requires strong safety engineering and training but it’s attractive partly because it avoids the high-GWP profile of many HFCs.
The Refrigeration Reality: Where Efficiency Is Won (Or Lost)
Think of a plant’s refrigeration system as a loop that is constantly paying for three things:
- Compression (the electricity-hungry “engine” of the system)
- Heat rejection (condensers dumping heat outdoors)
- Cold delivery (evaporators, fans, defrost cycles, and air movement inside rooms)
Most efficiency gains come from reducing how hard the system has to work or making it work smarter.
1) Compressors: The “Heart” That’s Often Oversized for Peace of Mind
In processing, oversizing is a common insurance policy: avoid warm rooms, avoid downtime, avoid food safety risk. The hidden cost is that oversized compressors can short-cycle, operate off their sweet spot, and burn excess energy.
Focusing on Industrial refrigeration energy efficiency can mitigate these issues, as the EPA’s guidance calls for practical measures like improved compressor staging, variable speed drives, and advanced strategies like floating head-pressure control and heat recovery. DOE similarly highlights variable speed control and strategies that reduce system “lift” (the pressure difference the compressor must create), including floating head pressure control.
In plain terms: if you can let compressors run smoother, at lower pressure when conditions allow, you can meaningfully cut energy without touching product.
2) Evaporators, Fans, and Defrost: “Small” Settings With Big Bills
A surprising share of refrigeration energy can be spent not on cooling product, but on moving air and fighting the side effects of cooling especially frost.
EPA flags evaporator controls, defrost cycle optimization, and refrigerated-space strategies like reducing infiltration (warm air leakage) as real savings opportunities. These are the kinds of changes consumers never see, but operators feel immediately: steadier temperatures, fewer hot spots, less ice buildup, fewer emergency maintenance calls.
3) Doors, Air Leaks, and “Invisible” Heat Loads
Every open dock door is a heat load. Every torn strip curtain is a heat load. Every unsealed pipe penetration is a heat load. Multiply those by shift changes and forklift traffic and you can wind up spending serious electricity just to cool the outdoors.
This is why good plants treat “cold discipline” like food safety discipline: it’s procedural, it’s cultural, and it’s audited.
Where Pacific Fits Into the Energy Story
While Pacific Seafood’s 2024 CSR report doesn’t publish a specific energy breakdown for cooling systems, it highlights signposts of a program evolving into a repeatable process for industrial refrigeration energy efficiency.
A formal efficiency partnership: Pacific’s Clackamas facility participated for the second year in a row in an Energy Trust of Oregon partnership and built an internal team to drive long-term changes.
Expanding the program to other sites: the report says Pacific Bio Products–Warrenton signed on for its first year in 2025 to work with engineers on boiler efficiency improvements.
Measured electricity savings (even if modest relative to a full plant load): the CSR cites 65,050 kWh saved (with equivalencies like removing cars from roadways and powering homes for a year).
And, importantly, the CEO letter frames efficiency as part of a broader footprint reduction effort cutting “water and energy consumption across our facilities.”
Those details don’t tell you “the compressors got upgraded.” But they do suggest Pacific is building the internal capability that real refrigeration optimization requires: engineering support, site teams, and ongoing measurement.
The Part Consumers Miss: Efficiency Protects Quality, Not Just the Planet
Energy choices don’t only affect emissions they affect the eating experience.
A well-controlled refrigeration system can mean:
- less temperature swing (quality holds longer)
- fewer partial thaws and refreezes (texture stays intact)
- more predictable shelf life and fewer claims
This is why “efficiency” isn’t just a sustainability department topic. It’s a product-quality topic that engineering and QA live with daily.
A Practical “No-Magic” Checklist for Plants Chasing Real Gains
To separate meaningful energy work from green theater, focus on the upgrades that truly drive industrial refrigeration energy efficiency. These are the upgrades that tend to show up in serious programs because DOE and EPA keep recommending them for a reason:
- Smarter compressor control and sequencing
- Variable speed drives (compressors and fans)
- Floating head pressure / reduced system lift when weather allows
- Defrost optimization + evaporator controls
- Heat recovery from compressors (when the site has useful heat loads)
Layer on refrigerant leak prevention (especially where high-GWP refrigerants are used), and the climate impact can be much larger than efficiency alone would suggest.
