Food-industry refrigeration must simultaneously reduce electricity use, replace high-global-warming-potential refrigerants, and make better use of rejected heat. This systematic review synthesises 101 peer-reviewed publications from 2015 to April 2026. Searches in Web of Science Core Collection, ScienceDirect, Scopus and IEEE Xplore identified 435 records; after deduplication, retrieval and full-text eligibility assessment, 101 publications were included and coded across four overlapping directions: heat recovery and useful heat valorisation (D1), energy efficiency and low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants (D2), renewable energy sources (D3), and modelling, validation and control (D4). A structured descriptive appraisal considered study design, validation, uncertainty reporting, operating relevance and economic or environmental boundaries. The central research gap is the absence of integrated, experimentally validated studies, as these directions are still pursued largely in isolation rather than combined on a single installation. The urgent priority is therefore a comprehensive demonstration that unites refrigerant substitution, staged heat recovery, renewable-energy and storage integration, and dynamic monitoring and control on an operating food-industry installation, evaluated against a measured baseline across representative periods in each season using technical, energy, economic, environmental and operational indicators that capture the overall efficiency gain of the installation.
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