Frascold Brand Guidelines: Fraschini Plus Cold, a Milan Compressor Name Since 1936

A Milan workshop, a wartime move and a joined-up name.

The name is the first thing to know. Die Kälte & Klimatechnik, the German trade journal, explained in February 2001 that Frascold joins the founding Fraschini family to its field of cold.

Frascold says Giuseppe Fraschini started in Milan in 1936. Its history page calls the business Officina Costruzioni Meccaniche and says it made open-type compressors by hand. In the anniversary account Refindustry carried in March 2026, the company named the first workshop as “Giuseppe Fraschini e figlio s.n.c.” and said he set it up together with his father, Carlo Fraschini. The two accounts use different names for the first firm; both give the same year and the same city.

The war moved the factory. The company says bombing of Milan led Fraschini to shift production to Legnano, north-west of the city, where the firm grew after the war by serving customers across Lombardy. During Italy’s economic boom it widened its range and raised its power ratings, the history page says, from 3 hp in the early 1950s to 120 hp in 1968.

The present name came with a change of legal form. In the 1970s, the Italian version of the history page says, Fraschini & Figli became a joint-stock company, Frascold S.p.A. In the same passage the company ranks itself as the world’s third business in high-end compressors at that time, in a field it counts at five industrial firms.

The final move came with growth. Frascold says the results of the 1990s required a transfer in 1999 to its present site at Rescaldina, also in the province of Milan. Die Kälte & Klimatechnik reported in early 2001 that Legnano had been the company’s seat until recently.

From open compressors to semi-hermetics and screws.

Frascold’s modern range rests on the semi-hermetic compressor. Die Kälte & Klimatechnik wrote that the firm added semi-hermetic production at Legnano in 1975, at first up to 3 hp, and that from 1980 it grew and pushed back open compressors. Four-cylinder machines arrived in 1984 and eight-cylinder ones in 1990, taking the range to 80 hp. The company credits Innocente Fraschini with promoting semi-hermetic compressors and strengthening its laboratories between the 1970s and 1980s, Refindustry reported in 2026.

Open compressors did not vanish. A new generation from 1994, the 2001 report said, served mainly transport refrigeration on road vehicles, railways, ships and containers. The same report described a redesign of the semi-hermetic line begun at the end of 1990 and finished in 1996, called LHC technology, in which the suction-valve profile is worked into the piston. It also recorded an export link from 1997 with TEKO, a maker of refrigeration racks, after which Frascold’s output rose from 1998.

Later steps came in new directions. The company’s history lists screw compressors from the 1990s, a dedicated research team for CO2 solutions from 2005, and in the following year its first line of ATEX reciprocating compressors for HFO and HFC refrigerants. ACR News reported in October 2011, the firm’s 75th anniversary year, that its programme included robotic manufacturing and automated test equipment at Rescaldina, and named the CX screw compressor with integrated inverter, the RX screw range and the VS variable-speed reciprocating range. A company profile also records an ACR News Award in the UK.

Today it sells reciprocating compressors, screw compressors and condensing units for four sectors: commercial refrigeration, refrigerated transport, industrial and process cooling, and comfort. The company says it worked between 2020 and 2021 on new test benches at its testing centre, including for CO2 and R290 compressors, and it describes long-term work with the laboratories of the Politecnico di Milano and the University of Padua. Its site also lists a series called Magnetic.

Design and documentation.

Refrigeration is a trade that sells equipment most people only half notice, and its makers tend to picture it where it works. Supermarket case makers show long runs of cabinets, glass doors catching the aisle lights and the shelves stretching away down the frame. Cooling tower makers go up to the roof and shoot their steel boxes against open sky.

Compressor makers work closer in. Their catalogues favour the cut-away: a casing sliced open with the copper, windings and pistons labelled, part engineering drawing and part sales picture. Coil makers go closer still, with condensate beading on fins and tubes in tight rows. Beverage cooler makers have a different job, because the cabinet is also an advertisement, so the photograph often sits on a shop floor with a drink brand’s name on the door.

Much of the category’s public life happens at trade fairs. Chillventa in Nuremberg is the refrigeration industry’s own show, EuroShop in Düsseldorf is where retail fittings meet retail design, AHR Expo moves between American cities for the heating, cooling and refrigeration trades, and Mostra Convegno Expocomfort in Milan covers heating, plumbing and cooling. At these shows the stand does the work of the brand book: a unit opened up, a logo at full height, model names on the panels.

That naming is a habit worth noticing. Ranges are usually identified by letters and numbers, written for engineers who read specification sheets, so a memorable product name or a founding story stands out. The guides here set out what can be checked about each one: who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made.

“90 Years of Pulsing Innovation.”

The Fraschini family remains at the head of the company. Die Kälte & Klimatechnik reported in 2001 that Innocente Fraschini was the sole owner, with Alberto Caraffini as managing director. Refindustry reported in March 2026 that Frascold said family ownership had reached its fourth generation, and quoted Maria Teresa Fraschini as president. The company’s governance page names her as president, Raffaele Bonito as vice president and Giuseppe Galli as chief executive; it says he joined in 1996 and took charge of production at Rescaldina in 1999.

Manufacturing is the centre of its pitch. Its English site says the compressors are “made right here” at its facilities in Milan, and the Rescaldina plant sits north-west of the city. Cooling Post reported in June 2018 that the 53,000 square metre plant was producing more than 70,000 screw and reciprocating compressors a year, after the installation of five CNC machining stations and a larger pressure-testing line. Frascold says it acquired the foundry Fonderie Palmieri in 2015 to control more of its value chain, opened sales offices in Shanghai and in Jacksonville, Florida, the same year, and has assembled condensing units at Ahmedabad, in Gujarat, since 2014. A company profile says it has distribution partners and service centres in 86 countries.

The identity has a documented recent chapter. For the anniversary in 2026 the company introduced the theme “90 Years of Pulsing Innovation,” and Refindustry reported that its updated visual identity uses a pattern inspired by a technological wave, meant to represent continuous movement. Its site carries the logo in a single blue. In June 2026 it marked the anniversary with a staff dinner and a Family Day at Rescaldina, opening the factory for guided tours, the company reported.

For a design guide, Frascold shows how much a founder’s surname can do when it is fused with the trade itself. Compare Dorin, the Florence compressor maker that keeps its founder’s full name on the company, and BITZER, the German compressor name. For this guide we use a blue, a deep navy and a frost tone with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Frascold’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.