Refrigeration and Cold Storage Equipments in Mauritius

The CFC-free certificate has to be issued in China

Mauritius operates no general pre-shipment conformity programme, and the certificate-of-conformity list it does publish is drawn up for domestic appliances, which leaves capital equipment outside the regime. One requirement, however, attaches directly to this division. Refrigerating equipment must arrive with a certificate confirming that it is free of chlorofluorocarbons, and that certificate must be issued in the country of origin. It is not something an agent can arrange in Port Louis once the container has berthed.

Two things follow at order stage. First, the refrigerant actually charged into each machine has to be named and locked into the contract before manufacture, because the certificate has to describe what was fitted, unit by unit. Second, the certificate must be raised in China and travel with the shipping documents, which means the exporter needs the final equipment schedule — models, serial numbers, charge per unit — early enough to have the document prepared rather than at the point of loading. A buyer who leaves the refrigerant designation as a factory option has made the certificate impossible to issue accurately.

Specifying against island conditions

Beyond the paperwork, refrigerant choice is an engineering decision and should be treated as one. The temperature figure quoted for a cabinet assumes an ambient and a loading pattern; where a Stainless Steel Open Fish and Seafood Display Refrigerator stands in an open shopfront the duty is harder than the catalogue figure implies, and the pull-down time after restocking is a fair question to ask at quotation. Supply is 230 V at 50 Hz, with Types C, E and G in circulation. Because compressor capacity is quoted at a given frequency, a unit must be ordered for the frequency it will run on — a Compressor Wine Cooler Wine Cellar built for a 60 Hz market does not keep its rating here.

Port Louis, language and public procurement

Containers come in through the Mer Rouge terminal at Port Louis. Mauritius works in English and French, so decide at the outset which language the manuals, nameplates and control markings are to carry; it is cheaper to fix in the factory than to translate afterwards, and a bilingual requirement should be written into the order if the end user needs one. Public bodies buy under the framework set by the Procurement Policy Office, with larger awards going through the Central Procurement Board and the e-Procurement System, where the published bid document rather than any supplier catalogue defines what is being asked for. Warranty, installation and training are governed by the individual supply contract; spares and after-sales service are not supplied.