AoFrio strengthens operational scale and AI readiness through a managed services approach

A business transformed through technology

AoFrio is a New Zealand-headquartered, globally operating company transforming the food and beverage industry through intelligent, connected refrigeration. 

Founded 40 years ago, AoFrio has spent the past decade transforming from a legacy engineering business best known for its motors and fans, into a leading AI-powered intelligence and IoT solutions provider.  

Today, the company’s technology connects more than 3.2 million coolers globally to the AoFrio cloud, helping organisations manage refrigeration assets, improve energy efficiency, and access operational insights across large-scale cooler fleets. With more than nine years of telemetry and operational data collected, AoFrio has also built a significant foundation of intelligence that continues to shape both its products and future direction. 

With over 150 employees globally, AoFrio operates across New Zealand, Latin America, North America, and other international markets. Despite that scale, the company’s internal IT function remains lean, with a small team focused on strategic work to enable the business’s evolution by working closer with the business, supporting innovation, and improving access to systems and data across the organisation. 

Building a scalable technology operating model

“There's a lot of critical information and systems that AoFrio has accumulated over our four decades,” says Declan Burke, Director of Digital Enablement and IT at AoFrio. “Technical debt, legacy systems, and operational complexity naturally builds over time. A big part of our focus has been simplifying that environment and removing friction, so people have access to the tools and information they need to deliver high-value work.” 

Modern technology environments are becoming increasingly interconnected and complex to manage. As systems, data and security technologies become more tightly integrated, organisations face growing pressure to balance innovation, operational performance, security, compliance, and risk. 

For AoFrio, that reinforced the importance of making thoughtful decisions about where internal teams should focus their time and energy, and where external capability could create greater leverage and value. 

Declan shared that a key part of his role is ensuring technology capability remains closely aligned to the broader strategic direction of the business. 

I work closely with the executive team and board to ensure IT is truly enabling and supporting the wider goals of the business, reducing risk to protect our customers and removing friction so our teams can work productively and without constraint.” 

With co-managed IT support from Fusion5, AoFrio’s internal team can focus on higher value work without the distractions of everyday IT support.  

The right managed services model creates leverage. It gives us access to specialist capability across areas like modern workplace, networking, infrastructure, cybersecurity and AI without needing to build that capability internally ourselves.” 

AoFrio has worked with the Fusion5 team for several years. As collective knowledge and trust have grown, both teams have been able to look beyond immediate operational needs and progress more proactive, strategic improvement initiatives. 

Building a cloud first and AI ready technology foundation 

One example of that has been AoFrio’s significant cloud-first transformation program, designed to simplify the technology environment, reduce legacy infrastructure, and strengthen long-term scalability. 

That work has included consolidating systems and identities following the company’s rebrand from Wellington Drive Technologies to AoFrio, migrating services and data into cloud environments, reducing on-premise infrastructure and improving consistency across security and access management. 

We didn’t want to just lift and shift old environments into the cloud, we wanted to simplify, consolidate and clean things up properly.” 

AoFrio is now removing its final remaining on-premise infrastructure, creating a more scalable and operationally consistent environment across the business. 

At the same time, the organisation has also been heavily focused on improving cybersecurity maturity and creating cleaner, more structured data foundations to support increasing adoption of AI technologies across both internal operations and future product capability. 

Leveraging AI to enhance the way our teams work, as well as a competitive differentiator in our products, is a critical part of our business. Ensuring our systems and data are structured, secure and accessible becomes really important as agentic AI becomes more embedded into how people work.” 

That focus reflects AoFrio’s broader approach to innovation. 

The business has already spent years building IoT, machine learning and data capability into its products and platforms. AoFrio is now implementing both operational AI and product-level AI capability as an increasingly important part of its future direction. 

Importantly, the organisation has taken a deliberate approach to building the operational, security and governance foundations required to support that next phase confidently and at scale. 

Creating an integrated technology capability 

For Declan, the success of the model comes from building an integrated technology capability focused on outcomes rather than organisational boundaries. 

There’s a lot of work that goes into building trust. What’s most important is having the right people solving problems, improving the environment and helping the business move forward.” 

By combining internal leadership with broader specialist capability across operational support, infrastructure, security and transformation initiatives, AoFrio has created a more scalable and resilient technology environment. One that allows the business to stay focused on innovation while continuing to strengthen the operational foundations required for future growth.