We maintain what we sell.
We service what we rent.
AquaCat isn't a container trader. We're a refrigeration operation that happens to use containers as the delivery mechanism.
Our Story
Started in Durban. Built for South Africa.
Started in Durban — the port where virtually every refrigerated container entering Southern Africa comes through. Greg Payne didn't just pick a location. He started where the cold chain starts. With 35 years in refrigeration engineering, he saw that most businesses buying reefer containers were being sold hardware with no ongoing support. The compressor fails at 2am, and the oke who sold you the unit doesn't pick up the phone.
AquaCat was built to fix that. Many of our units begin as international shipping reefers — built to survive ocean crossings and port handling. When they come off shipping duty, we fully inspect, service, and repurpose them for on-shore stationary cold storage. Same industrial-grade refrigeration, now working in a fixed location with a maintenance programme behind it.
Today we're based in Ballito, KwaZulu-Natal, managing a fleet of over 200 units. Rentals are South Africa-first — every rental unit comes with a maintenance programme, because we don't just drop a container and disappear. Container sales extend beyond our borders into Southern Africa, East Africa, and the DRC. Same engineering standard. Same commitment to supporting what we sell.
The AquaCat Difference
Why businesses stay with us
Fleet Operator, Not a Trader
We maintain 200+ units daily. When you call for a breakdown, we already know the model, the common faults, and we're carrying the parts. Try getting that from someone who bought a shipping lot and marked it up.
Maintenance Built In
Our SLV2 and SLV3 plans include planned servicing and emergency cover. Your cold chain becomes a solved problem instead of your biggest operational vulnerability.
No Lock-In Flexibility
Month-to-month rental. Scale up for citrus season, a construction project, or a new contract. Scale back down when you're done. The unit gets collected.
35+ Years of Refrigeration Engineering
This isn't our first cold room. Our team brings decades of reefer-specific experience -- not general HVAC contractors figuring it out on the job.
Our Customers
Trusted by industry leaders
Netcare, Life Healthcare, and National Renal Care -- organisations where cold chain failure isn't a financial inconvenience, it's a patient safety issue -- trust AquaCat maintenance for their pharmaceutical storage.
WBHO, Profica, Trencon -- construction firms who need units that perform on site, every time. They don't buy from us because we're the cheapest. They buy because the unit works when it arrives and keeps working.
From Lancet Labs' specimen storage to Roots Butchery's processing cold rooms -- our solutions are designed around real operational workflows.
Looking Ahead
What's next
Cold storage is our foundation — but cold chain infrastructure gaps don't stop at Beit Bridge. We've sold units into Zambia, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, the DRC, Tanzania, and Malawi, taking the same engineering discipline that works in KZN into markets where the nearest refrigeration technician might be hours away.
The same containerised, maintainable approach that makes us good at reefer containers — precision temperature control, rapid deployment, proper servicing — applies to other infrastructure challenges too. We're exploring modular data centre solutions for edge computing and distributed IT. Same philosophy: deploy fast, maintain properly, and ja, actually pitch up when something goes wrong.
Let's talk about your cold storage.
Tell us what you need -- size, temperature, timeline. We'll give you a straight answer, not a 15-page proposal.