COOLEX was founded in Finland in 1986 by Mr. Johan M Karlstedt and his brother Mr. Magnus Karlstedt, both second generation HVACR engineers. COOLEX was mainly founded to manufacture, sell and market an award-winning heat-pump technology invented by the brothers’ father Mr. Holger Karlstedt. This so called “EtaMax” heat-recovery technology gives 40-50% savings in the heating costs by cooling down flue-gases from gas and oil fired boilers. Etamax is patented in 15 countries world-wide. For example, in the US it has the US Patent number 4,687,133.

After some initial years of basic build-up COOLEX really started to take-off as a major Scandinavian HVAC/R brand-name and manufacturer in the early 1990’s. By year 1995 COOLEX was the biggest of its kind in Scandinavia, having expanded to manufacture over 250 different models of Refrigeration, Air-Conditioning and Heat-pump units for the EU and Russian markets. The production was fully automated and extremely efficient. The annual growth-rate was 40% and the net profit was 30%.

For the first years this was done in the US which is the biggest HVAC/R market in the world. Later a strategic decision was made to relocate COOLEX to Asia where the real growth and need for innovative HVAC/R solutions is and will be for the next decades.

In year 2005 Singapore was chosen as the new global HQ and COOLEX International Pte Ltd was founded. At this point the ownership had also changed so that Mr. Johan M Karlstedt with his family had taken over the business. Today the Karlstedts are Singapore PRs with the main aim to build COOLEX into a major Singaporean HVAC/R brand.