Shoppers in Somerset and Bristol walked into supermarkets last week to find fridges switched off and shelves stripped bare — the first visible sign of a crisis experts say will only worsen as Britain’s heatwave intensifies.
Bristol-based refrigeration expert Dr Alan Foster warned that most fridges in UK homes and supermarkets were “designed decades ago in a much cooler world” and cannot handle temperatures now routinely topping 32C — the typical upper limit for these appliances. When the mercury climbs beyond that, as it did last week and may again next week, the compressor works non-stop to keep things cold, eventually giving way to breakdown.
“Older fridges in UK homes and supermarkets fail as temperatures exceed 32C, forcing shops to empty shelves.”
“In most of the supermarkets out there, the fridges were designed for 32C, which obviously isn’t enough,” Foster said from his testing lab in Lower Langford, Somerset, where he runs experiments inside a climate-controlled chamber fitted with sensors and gel blocks to measure cooling.
Engineers in Wiltshire have reported record call-outs to home fridges that have “given up the ghost”, while supermarkets — already reeling from the 2022 heatwave that saw temperatures hit 40.3C for the first time — are being forced to close entire banks of chilled cabinets just to keep the remaining ones running. A study commissioned by the UK Climate Change Commission found that the food industry was badly hit during that event, with increased energy costs and widespread failure of refrigeration systems in retail facilities.
Foster’s team at Refrigeration Developments and Testing (RD&T) advises many of the big retailers on how to adapt to a warming climate. He explained that once the ambient temperature exceeds the design threshold, the system’s compressor runs continuously until it breaks down. To stave off total collapse, supermarkets reduce the number of cabinets in use, diverting cooling power to the most crucial units.
As the Met Office warns that heatwaves are becoming more common in the UK, the question is whether the nation’s ageing fridges can keep up — or whether the empty aisles of Somerset and Bristol are a sign of what’s to come.