Frimetal 🇪🇸

Frimetal is the Madrid-based battery manufacturer that has been behind many Spanish installations without its name ever appearing in a consumer advertisement. It was founded in 1963 by Ramón Martínez “with the mission of offering solutions in heat exchangers, evaporators and condensers,” and it remains a family business, today on San Toribio Street in Madrid, in the hands of the second and third generations; the founder remained linked to it until his death in 2021, at 96 years old. It manufactures evaporators, condensers and “all types of tube-and-fin exchangers for the industrial, commercial refrigeration and air‑conditioning market,” exports about 25 % of its production and has between 50 and 200 employees.

His role in the history of air conditioning is explained by an installer who started in 1972: the Hitachi water‑condensed cabinets that his company imported for hotels “some we had to convert to air‑condensation (remote condenser), brands Frimetal, Friga‑Bohn”. In other words, when in the ’70s condensate water began to be a problem on the coast — consumption, legionella, cooling towers — technicians converted the equipment to air‑condensation with Spanish remote condensers from Frimetal or French ones from Friga‑Bohn. The same was done with the autonomous units from Klimat, Elyte or Roca of that era.

Frimetal thus belongs, along with Gould Aircoil and Otedisa, to the auxiliary Madrid air‑conditioning industry, which manufactured the batteries and condensers that were placed inside or beside the branded units. Its axial and centrifugal condensers today are direct descendants of those that replaced water with air in hotel basements in the ’70s.

The company's history comes from its own website (foundation in 1963, products, export), from the profile “El legado de Frimetal” published by the AECIM association after the founder's death in 2021, and from its LinkedIn profile (size and headquarters). Its use in air‑to‑water conversion systems of the 1970s is mentioned in the testimony of “guiem mallorca” on elaireacondicionado.com (2009), which cites it alongside Friga‑Bohn as a brand of remote condensers. Current distributors (Refrigeración Zelsio) maintain a catalog of its condensers and evaporators.

What the testimony demonstrates is the existence, already in the 70s, of a Spanish auxiliary industry capable of supplying remote condensers for Japanese 12,000 frigorías units, and of a workshop practice—converting water‑cooled condensers to air‑cooled condensers—that today would be unthinkable with sealed units. Frimetal, founded in 1963, was then less than ten years old and already competed in that supply with the French Friga‑Bohn. Neither of the two appears in the consumer advertising of the time, and therefore their trace in collecting is nil; the memory of installers is, for now, the only source that places them in the history of hotel installations of the 70s. A plate from a Frimetal condenser on a Balearic rooftop from that decade would be the documentary confirmation.

History machine-translated from Spanish. Can you improve it? Write to us.