About Us

Our Legacy of Precision and Trust

Third generation businesses are becoming rarer and rare in these modern times, however Hansen Refrigeration Machinery Company, now based in Carlton, Mn is just that. It is hard to imagine that Donald Julka would have thought that when he purchased the company from Fred Hansen, creator of the Hansen industrial chiller, in 1968, his family would continue his legacy 3 generations later.

In the mid 1950’s in Fond du Lac, WI, Giddings & Lewis Machine Tool Co. approached Fred Hansen Sr. challenging him to create a refrigeration unit necessary to cool lubricants circulating through their industrial machinery. In 1957 he delivered the first custom designed and configured chiller to G & L, which was successfully able to keep liquids at a precise temperature throughout the industrial process. In 1967 Hansen hired Donald Julka to be General Manager of the growing company. Julka was able to take the business to the next step and when Fred Hansen Sr. retired in 1976, he sold the business to Julka. Soon thereafter, Hansen Refrigeration Machinery Co., Inc. became a nation-wide leader in the manufacture of liquid chillers.

After Donald Julka’s death in 1996, his widow Janet eventually sold the business to their son J.R. Julka, who had worked for his father for decades learning the business from the ground up. J.R. and his wife, Mary Liz owned, ran, and successfully grew the business to be a globally recognized name in industrial fluid chilling. Upon his retirement in 2023, he sold it to The Minardi Companies, owned by his brother-in-law Dean Minardi, and his nephews Nick and Mitch Minardi. In 2024, the Minardi Companies moved Hansen Refrigeration Machinery to Carlton, MN, just outside Duluth, MN. The brothers Nick and Mitch Minardi run the operations of the company as a team, custom designing and engineering Hansen's newest generation of chillers, as well as continuing to provide service and support for generational chillers that are still in use, many of which are decades old. Though each chiller is customized to meet the specific requirements of each client’s needs in today’s modern world, and with today's modern technologies, the design is still based on the integrity and reliability of the chiller originally created by Fred Hansen, and refined by their Grandfather and Uncle, over the past 70 years ago.

The Minardi Companies is dedicated to maintaining Hansen's professionalism, quality of work, and the service of our products, with the same integrity and determination as generations before. As now the third generation of our family to own and operate Hansen Refrigeration Machinery, we recognize the importance of fostering valued relationships built over generations, while continuing growth and building chillers for generations to come.