In May 2026, LSI Industries announced a strategic partnership with U.K. manufacturer Carter Thermal Industries Group to expand its remote refrigeration offerings in the U.S. We sat down with Travis Smith, Director of Refrigeration Applications, to explore the partnership, the solutions it introduces, and what it means for customers.
At a high level, what does the partnership between Carter and LSI bring to the U.S. refrigeration market?
The partnership brings together Carter’s longstanding refrigeration engineering and product expertise with LSI’s U.S. manufacturing capabilities, customer relationships, sales organization, service infrastructure, and broader retail solutions portfolio.
Together, we are expanding the refrigeration solutions available to U.S. customers, particularly in remote refrigeration, while creating a pathway to manufacture, support, and further develop these products in North America. It allows LSI to provide customers with a broader range of refrigeration technologies while giving Carter a much stronger platform to serve the U.S. market.
For our existing customers, it’s business as usual. They can continue working with us as they always have, with the added benefit of more refrigeration options and expertise to support their projects.
What made Carter a strong strategic partner for LSI?
Carter brings more than 80 years of refrigeration experience and a strong reputation for product performance, engineering, energy efficiency, and innovation.
They also bring significant experience with remote refrigeration systems and natural refrigerants, including CO2, and Water Cooling which complements LSI’s established position in self-contained refrigeration.
Just as importantly, there was a strong alignment between the two companies around company culture, engineering, product quality, customer support, and the desire to develop long-term refrigeration solutions.
How does the partnership expand LSI’s existing refrigeration capabilities?
Carter significantly expands that capability by adding remote refrigerated display cases and additional system configurations such as CO2 and Water Cooled condensing units.
This allows LSI to participate in a much broader range of refrigeration applications and gives our sales organization the ability to approach customers with solutions across self-contained, remote, water-cooled, and natural refrigerant applications. Which essentially covers the full footprint of the retail environments we sell into.
It moves us much closer to being able to provide a complete refrigeration offering rather than addressing only one portion of a retailer’s refrigeration needs.
What refrigeration products and system options will now be available to U.S. customers?
The initial Carter offering focuses heavily on remote refrigerated display cases, including open multi decks, doored multi decks, reach-ins, and frozen-food applications.
Customers will have access to solutions designed around multiple refrigeration strategies, including traditional remote systems, CO2 systems, and other configurations depending on the application.
When combined with LSI’s existing portfolio, customers will have access to both remote and self-contained products, including R290 self-contained equipment, giving them considerably more flexibility when designing a store.
How do remote refrigeration systems differ from self-contained systems, and when might a retailer choose one over the other?
A self-contained refrigerated case has the refrigeration system built directly into the case. It is generally easier to install and can provide retailers with considerable flexibility because the case can often be placed with relatively limited infrastructure.
A remote case relies on a refrigeration system located elsewhere in the building, such as a compressor rack or remote condensing system. The display case contains the evaporator and controls, while the heat rejection and much of the mechanical refrigeration equipment are located remotely.
Self-contained systems can be attractive for smaller stores, remodels, individual refrigerated displays, and applications where installation simplicity is important. Or the need to frequently rearrange departments due to seasons products or foot traffic.
Remote systems are often better suited for supermarkets and larger refrigeration installations where many cases operate from a centralized system. They can also provide benefits related to heat management, system efficiency, store noise, serviceability, and the use of technologies such as CO2.
Ultimately, the right solution depends on the retailer, store format, refrigeration load, sustainability goals, and available infrastructure.
What types of retailers, store formats or applications are likely to benefit most from these expanded offerings?
The expanded portfolio creates opportunities across grocery, convenience, specialty retail, foodservice, institutional, and other food retail environments.
Supermarkets and larger grocery formats are a natural fit because of their extensive use of remote refrigeration.
However, smaller-format grocery, convenience stores, specialty food retailers, and retailers developing new store concepts can also benefit because we can now evaluate the refrigeration strategy around the specific application rather than trying to make one technology fit every store.
What are the biggest advantages for U.S. customers, particularly when it comes to manufacturing, lead times, service, and ongoing support?
One of the most important advantages is combining Carter’s refrigeration technology with LSI’s North American infrastructure.
Our long-term strategy includes bringing manufacturing capability closer to the U.S. customer, which can improve responsiveness, reduce dependence on overseas supply chains, and provide greater flexibility as programs scale.
Customers also gain access to LSI’s established sales, engineering, quality, field service, and customer-support organizations.
That is particularly important for national retailers. Introducing a product is only one part of a successful refrigeration program. Customers also need application support, technical training, replacement parts, warranty support, and people who can help resolve issues throughout the life of the equipment.
How is Carter’s established refrigeration technology being adapted, tested and certified for the North American market?
Carter already has an established product platform, so we are not starting from a blank sheet of paper.
Carter products have already gone through the appropriate North American testing and certification processes, including applicable safety, sanitation, performance, and energy requirements.
We are also enhancing our testing capabilities within LSI so that products can be evaluated and validated in North America as the portfolio continues to develop.
What options will customers have for customization, including case configurations, cooling methods, finishes, and integration with existing store systems?
One of the strengths of the combined organization is the ability to approach refrigeration as a configurable solution.
Depending on the product and application, customers may have options around case width, height, depth, shelving, doors, lighting, merchandising accessories, finishes, refrigeration configuration, and controls.
Cases can also be developed around different refrigeration strategies, including remote systems, CO2 applications, traditional HFC/HFO blends and other cooling approaches where appropriate.
We will also work with customers to understand the controls and building-management systems already being used within their stores so that the refrigeration equipment can be designed to integrate into their existing infrastructure whenever possible.
How can Carter’s refrigeration technology work alongside LSI’s lighting, graphics, fixtures, and other retail solutions?
This is one of the areas where the partnership becomes especially powerful.
LSI already works with retailers across lighting, fixtures, graphics, digital solutions, and refrigerated merchandising.
We can look at the complete retail environment, including how the refrigerated display integrates with surrounding fixtures, how it is illuminated, how products are merchandised, how graphics and branding are incorporated, and how digital technology may be integrated into the display.
How does this partnership benefit LSI as a company?
The partnership significantly expands LSI’s addressable refrigeration market.
It gives us access to product categories and customer opportunities where remote refrigeration is required and strengthens our position with large grocery and food retail customers.
It also brings additional refrigeration engineering knowledge into the organization and creates opportunities to develop new products that combine Carter technology with LSI manufacturing, engineering, lighting, fixtures, graphics, and digital capabilities.
From a strategic standpoint, it helps position LSI as a broader refrigeration and retail-solutions provider.
What does the partnership mean for Carter and its ability to serve the North American market?
For Carter, LSI provides an established platform in North America.
Rather than building an entirely new sales, manufacturing, service, and distribution infrastructure from the ground up, Carter can leverage LSI’s existing capabilities and customer relationships.
It allows Carter’s refrigeration technology to reach a much larger U.S. customer base while also giving those customers access to local engineering, manufacturing, service, and technical support.
How will the combined engineering and manufacturing capabilities of Carter and LSI support large or multi-location rollouts?
Combining LSI and Carter’s product knowledge and refrigeration expertise with LSI’s domestic presence and established infrastructure for supporting large retail programs creates a much stronger platform for supporting customers.
Together, these strengths allow us to provide a broader product offering, stronger technical support, domestic service capabilities, and the infrastructure needed to successfully support large-scale national retail programs.
How do energy efficiency, natural refrigerants, and evolving environmental requirements factor into the solutions being introduced?
They are major considerations in the development of the portfolio.
Refrigeration represents a significant portion of energy use within many food retail environments, so improving system and case efficiency can have a meaningful impact on the overall cost of ownership.
The industry is also moving toward lower-GWP and natural refrigerant technologies. Carter has considerable experience working with CO2 refrigeration, while LSI already has significant experience with R290 self-contained refrigeration.
Having experience across multiple refrigeration technologies allows us to help customers evaluate the solution that makes the most sense for their operation rather than being tied to a single refrigerant or system architecture.
It also positions the partnership well as environmental regulations and retailer sustainability strategies continue to evolve.
Looking ahead, what opportunities does this partnership create for future product development and innovation?
By combining Carter’s refrigeration engineering expertise with LSI’s engineering, manufacturing, lighting, digital, and fixture capabilities, we have an opportunity to develop products specifically around the needs of the North American market.
That could include new case formats, improved energy performance, advanced controls, natural refrigerant solutions, integrated lighting and digital merchandising, and refrigeration platforms designed around new store formats.
The partnership gives both organizations a much larger development platform than either would have independently.
What is the most important thing you want U.S. customers to understand about Carter refrigeration and the LSI partnership?
The most important message is that Carter is not a new refrigeration company or an unproven technology being introduced to the U.S. market.
Carter has decades of refrigeration engineering and product experience. What is new is the ability to combine that technology with LSI’s North American manufacturing, sales, service, and retail solutions infrastructure.
As a reminder, it’s business as usual for our existing customers. They can continue working with us as they always have, with the added benefit of Carter’s proven refrigeration expertise backed by the U.S. organization they already know and work with.
Our objective is not simply to sell another refrigerated case. It is to give customers more refrigeration options, stronger technical support, and a partner capable of supporting their refrigeration strategy from product development through deployment and ongoing service.
To learn more about this partnership, visit the LSI Carter website.