Pelican Coolers being used by the South African Military

Pelican Professional • Apr 25, 2017

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) partners with Pelican Products to enhance the way their troops are fed while out conducting patrol and exercises in the field. Their military deploys all over Africa, so you can imagine the brutal temporal and geographic conditions these coolers must withstand. In fact, South Africa is crowned with the Earth's hottest temperature ever recorded in the month of October, which occurred on Tuesday, October 27, 2015, when the town of Vredendal hit a remarkable 119.1°F (source). With these extremes in mind, SANDF needed to find solutions that could handle intense temperature fluctuations as well as the durability required to function in the African bush.

Enter Pelican Professional, which has protected defense, emergency and scientific expedition equipment in some of the harshest conditions on Earth since 1976. This same DNA is built into the current product line of Pelican Elite Coolers. From the latches to the freezer-grade seal to the toughest handles in the business, every Pelican part is engineered to our extreme durability and performance standards.

SANDF will use the Kitchen Systems build by South African OTT and Desert Wolf, including the Pelican Elite Coolers to fulfill their need for field cooking units capable of ‘Chilled Storage Mode’. This means that it will be loaded with 10kg of chilled rations at a temperature of 6˚C and must maintain this exact temperature of the contents for over 48 hours in ambient temperature of 30 ˚C. The coolers can be in the field for anything between 48 hours to 7 days.

This is the first project of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa and a huge step forward from previous methods of meal preparation which included basic consumption of Field Ration Packs and preparing food on open fires. Future projects expected require Mass Field Feeding Capability (MFFC) for the preparation of food for 200 people and a MFFC for the preparation of food for 50 people.

You can read more about the incredible capabilities of the Pelican Elite Cooler series here: pelican.com/us/en/products/coolers.