Meals With Meaning
If you’re driving near to the city of Aracariguama, São Paulo, on Brazil’s Castello Branco Highway, and you fancy a bite to eat, maybe you’ll pull over at the Madero Ecoparada. Here you’ll find a wide variety of restaurants offering options from burgers to salads, and from ice cream to old-fashioned “grandma’s food”.
But this gleaming, grandiose complex is no everyday highway stop-off. Rather, it’s a glimpse of the future, built with sustainability front of mind. The building is LEED-accredited and features a central composting bin, where all the organic waste collected from the six restaurants is turned into fertiliser. Other sustainable benefits include rainwater being captured for reuse in bathrooms, while photovoltaic panels capture solar energy to supply the entire lighting system and charging points for electric cars in the parking lot.
The Ecoparada is the latest venture by the Madero Group, which has more than 250 restaurants in more than 70 cities in Brazil. The group is headed by Junior Durski, a charismatic, self-taught chef who is as passionate about sustainability as he is about bringing high quality eating to the four corners of his country. Madero works with small producers, using ingredients grown in a natural way without chemicals.
Most of the food served at the Madero Group’s restaurants, including those at its Ecoparada, is initially prepared at a central kitchen and distribution centre in Ponta Grossa, Paraná, in the south of the country*. And this is where Güntner enters the story.
The 81,000 sq m site incorporates three manufacturing units. Strict quality controls are applied to everything that is produced there, and similarly rigorous standards are used when it comes to selecting equipment suppliers. The company claims to have the most modern equipment in the world, and that includes a refrigeration system developed and provided by our partner, AMP Refrigeration Industry, which uses Güntner cooling solutions.
Güntner’s association with the Madero Group began in 2017, through AMP Refrigeration Industry, and developed in several stages. First came cooling systems for the delivery storage unit and preparation and packaging rooms, followed by Air Coolers for hamburger and bakery processing. Today, the whole complex uses a Güntner refrigeration system for the production of meals for all of the group’s brands.
More than 150 Güntner units were installed, mainly Cubic COMPACT and Dual COMPACT Air Coolers, together with some Blast Air Coolers. “The commercial refrigeration air coolers met the technical requirements of greater reach by using streamers in some of the Cubic COMPACT Air Coolers; together with an efficient electric defrost system, a double tray for collecting water condensation, and the use of more natural refrigerants.” says Faili. “We also provided several Condensers with EC fans to optimise energy consumption. These were V-shape COMPACT Condensers, which provide the best relationship between the area of installation and the rejected heat, as well as guaranteeing durability, and ease of maintenance and cleaning.“.
“Our company specialises in supplying the most up-to-date equipment and refrigeration technology allied with sustainability and customer satisfaction. Our partnership with Madero is based on those values,” adds José Augusto Lemos, Commercial Director at AMP Refrigeration Industry.
* Information gathered from public websites from Grupo Madero.