The products, developed as part of Ecofrig project undertaken under the bilateral programme between Switzerland and India, were launched on Tuesday by chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

Project Ecofrig was undertaken with the specific objective to adopt hydrocarbon technology for commercial refrigeration appliances in cooperation with industry and research institutes.

The Zurich-based Infras, a consulting group for environmental economics and policies, and the Tata Engineering Research Institute (Teri) were entrusted with the task of project coordination.

"The launch of new Rockwell product marks an important step in phasing out the use of CFCs in commercial refrigerators," Infras managing director Othmar Schwank said.

Rockwell managing director Ashok Gupta said the company had put up a plant in technical collobaration with an Italian company to produce 50,000 refrigerators per year, 30 per cent of which will be exported. Rockwell, has been in the commercial refrigeration business for the past ten years and has been supplying refrigerators to companies like Coke and Pepsi.

The research inputs for the project were provided by the IIT Delhi and the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune.