Ice as a consumer good has been around since Frederic Tudor, “the Ice King” first sold blocks of ice cut from Thoreau’s frozen Walden Pond in the first half of 19th century. From these early beginnings, the packaged ice industry has grown to become a $2.5 billion a year goliath. Tudor’s ice-harvesting methods dominated until the 1940’s when reliable electrical freezers and refrigerators provided continuous ice production and permanently replaced the seasonally-dependent ponds of yesteryear. Since this innovation of locally operated Ice Plants after World War II, little had changed. Local mom-and-pop operations may have been gobbled up by the mega-distributors like Reddy Ice or Arctic Glacier, but the basic delivery mechanism of ice plant production distributed on a refrigerated truck delivered to a refrigerated on-site cooler had remained unchanged for 60+ years. That is - until 2003.
Increasing labor, insurance and fuel costs had forced packaged ice providers to continually raise rates to stem their eroding margins. This created an opportunity. In the town of Moultrie, Georgia, a new process was conceived. Employing the great American tradition of using technology to deliver a superior product for a cheaper price, the breakthrough occurred. Produce and package ice at the point of sale. By eliminating the costs and waste associated with the conventional method of delivering ice, one could produce and package ice at a fraction of the cost it takes even the largest ice providers to deliver their product.
As with all innovation, the first machines have been complicated, expensive, and difficult to maintain. Part-time inventors have thrown ill-conceived concepts promising performance and/or quality they have no capability of delivering. The market has been beset by the clutter typical of such breakthroughs, until now.
The Polarmatic first entered the marketplace in 2006 and through a continuous stream of technological breakthroughs, has established itself as the highest production, most efficient, lowest maintenance machine delivering the highest quality ice to the consumer in the marketplace. With almost 12,000 pounds of production capacity a day it dwarfs the competition. With a production, storage and delivery process that never climbs above 32 degrees, waste is virtually eliminated, bacterial growth is eliminated (unlike other systems that store their ice above freezing), and the quality of the end product is unmatched. Compare a bag of Polarmatic’s “dry” ice to the competition’s “wet” ice and see the melt time difference. With a patented, simple, component-driven process that contains very few moving parts, maintenance requirements pale in comparison to other, more complicated (and less efficient) systems. Finally, with Polarmatic offering the industry’s only customizable graphics package, the Owner can wrap their machine with the design that best fits their brand and location.
Polarmatic’s guiding principles center around continuous technological improvement, top-quality manufacturing and the industry’s best Owner support and service.
