Welcome: Laizhou Machinery Group
A caravan fridge is specified twice: as an appliance, and as a space in the build. An importer who settles only the appliance ends up with a unit that has no cabinet, no vent path or no battery capacity behind it. An importer who settles only the space ends up with a cut-out sized for a fridge their market does not want. Both decisions belong on the same page, before the deposit — that is where refrigeration stops being a post-delivery problem.
The first thing to establish is not which fridge. It is whether a fridge comes with the caravan at all.
On the 16ft hard-top models — the 4–5 berth HT-16 Family, the 3 berth HT16 Island and the 2 berth HT16 East West — the refrigerator sits on the optional equipment line, alongside the air conditioner and the diesel heater. The base unit is a caravan without a refrigerator, which is normal for this class of export build: the dealer or importer specifies the appliance that suits their market rather than accepting one fitted for somebody else's.
The 21ft model documents the opposite approach. Its specification table names a specific appliance — a Thetford 150L compressor fridge — and the same model lists an internal galley with a 3-burner stainless steel cooktop, oven and grill, a 700W microwave and a range hood. The 21ft off-road caravan specification is therefore the one to read line by line if you want a factory-fitted unit.
The commercial consequence is easy to miss. Two importers can order what they think of as the same caravan, and only one of them receives a fridge inside the price. Ask for the standard equipment list and the optional equipment list as two separate documents, then ask which list the refrigerator appears on for the exact model and configuration you are buying.
A built-in fridge needs a cabinet run, a vent path and room for the door to swing. Those exist only where the layout has an internal kitchen, and the kitchens in this range are not the same:
That difference decides what you can sell. On an external-kitchen-only model most buyers run a portable 12V fridge or fridge-freezer, carried in the front tunnel and moved outside at camp. On a model with a full internal galley, a built-in unit is the natural specification and a portable one reads as a downgrade at the showroom desk.
So the question worth asking a factory is not "can you fit a fridge". It is "show me the layout drawing with the fridge position marked". If the cabinet is not on the drawing, the fridge is not in the build — and a refrigerator ordered as a loose item arrives as a box, not an installed appliance.
A compressor fridge does not wait for the mains. It runs on 12V DC, cycling day and night, including every night the caravan stands without a powered site.
That turns refrigeration into a permanent line in the DC budget, and the DC budget is where LZM's documented models differ most:
The same fridge behaves differently on those two builds. On the AGM and 300W arrangement a 24-hour compressor load is one of the largest continuous draws the caravan has. On the lithium and 875W arrangement there is substantially more headroom, plus enough stored energy to carry the fridge through a cloudy stretch without switching it off.
This is why refrigeration should be specified as one package with the battery bank and solar array, rather than as three separate options with three separate price lines. If your market expects a fridge that runs permanently off-grid, size the DC side around that expectation from the first order. If most units will spend their life on powered sites, paying for autonomy the customer never uses is money parked in your warehouse. Specifications vary by model and final configuration, so work from the model page plus a written build sheet for your own order.
Three refrigeration formats reach the export market, and they fail in different ways.
Compressor. Runs on 12V DC, so it is indifferent to whether your market is 240V or 120V. Compressor units generally cope better with high ambient temperatures than absorption units do. The trade-off is the daily draw on the battery — this is the appliance that exposes an undersized DC system.
Absorption, or three-way. Runs on 12V, mains or gas, and is the format many European and Australian buyers expect to see. It needs cuts in the body for its vent path and reasonably level ground when running on gas. Those vents cannot be added after arrival without cutting panels that are already finished and sealed, so the decision has to be made before production starts. Gas-related documentation expectations differ between markets and are best checked with local requirements rather than assumed from the destination country's name.
Portable. The lowest-cost route, and the one that suits a model with no internal galley. It moves between the caravan and the tow vehicle, needs no cabinet, and can be sold as an accessory or bundled with the sale. It also occupies floor space, is less efficient than a built-in unit, and is the first item to go missing or come back damaged — a real cost for off-road caravans for hire and rental operators, whose units are used by people who did not buy them.
Whichever format you choose, the deciding factor is often who can repair it. A fridge is a moving appliance with a compressor, door seals, hinges and a control module. Confirm that your market has a service route for the brand before the fridge moves into your standard specification.
A compressor fridge draws from the caravan battery while the caravan is moving, so the question is not whether the fridge works but whether the battery stays up. That depends on the charging path from the tow vehicle, which is a separate item from the solar array.
On the 16ft hard-top models the documented specification includes a Projecta IDC booster charger for exactly this job, charging the caravan battery from the tow vehicle rather than relying on a simple voltage-sensing relay. Confirm the same detail for any model you order and for the tow vehicle your customer actually drives, because a fridge that flattens the battery on a towing day is a conversation no dealer wants at the service counter.
Yes — and the number is rarely printed where you would look for it. The published 16ft hard-top models all carry an ATM of 3000kg, and the stated tare weights sit a few hundred kilograms below that figure. The gap between the two is what the fridge, water, gas, annex and the customer's belongings have to share.
Two further details matter. First, the model weight notes state that the published figures exclude gas bottles, jerry cans, annex walls and annex roof, so a delivered caravan is heavier than the sheet before anything is loaded into it. Second, a fridge fitted at the factory consumes payload permanently, while a portable one only consumes it when it is carried. Ask for the fitted weight and place it in the same calculation as the fresh water capacity you are offering.
Sometimes, but only into a cabinet built for it. A larger unit needs a larger opening and, on absorption models, a matching vent path. Ordering the size your market wants at the factory is the cheaper route; enlarging a cavity locally usually means rebuilding the cabinet run and refinishing the interior around it.
Rarely. Where the caravan spends most of its life on mains power, a smaller compressor unit and a modest battery bank are sufficient. Where off-grid travel is the selling point, the fridge has to be specified with the lithium bank and solar array that can carry it. Splitting the specification by market keeps the price honest in each one, and it keeps your dealer conversations about the product rather than about the option list.
LZM manufactures and exports off-road caravans from China for dealers, importers and rental operators, with documented supply to Australia, New Zealand and the United States and production of more than 3,000 off-road caravans annually. Refrigeration is one line on a long specification sheet — but it is the line that decides whether a caravan sells as an off-grid product or a weekend one. Settle it with the kitchen, the battery bank and the payload, not after them.
