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Hudson Technologies cleans and recycles the refrigerant gases used in air conditioners and refrigerators, then sells that gas back to the people who service cooling equipment.
Hudson Technologies is a refrigerant company. When air conditioners, supermarket coolers, and building chillers need gas, Hudson is one of the businesses that supplies it — but its real specialty is taking used refrigerant, cleaning it up, and selling it again instead of letting it escape into the air.
Here's the basic problem it solves. Refrigerants are the fluids that make cooling work, and the most common ones are potent greenhouse gases — some trap thousands of times more heat than carbon dioxide. Old rules let companies vent that gas when equipment was serviced or scrapped. Hudson built a business on reclaiming it: customers send in dirty or leftover refrigerant, Hudson filters and purifies it to industry standards, and sells the cleaned gas to contractors and equipment owners who need it. It also sells virgin refrigerant, rents out recovery equipment and cylinders, and offers on-site cleanup services. Customers choose Hudson because it is one of the largest reclaimers in the country, with a national network that can handle gas almost anywhere. The business got a huge push from regulation. Under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, the EPA began phasing down the production of common refrigerants like R-410A, which made reclaimed gas more valuable and pushed prices up. That helped Hudson's revenue and profit jump in recent years, and the company has been investing in its cleaning plants to handle more volume. Refrigerant prices are volatile, though — they swing with supply rules and demand — so Hudson's results can rise and fall sharply with the market. It also faces competition from other reclaimers and chemical producers.
In 1991, Stephen Mandracchia and Kevin Zugibe started Hudson in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. Their idea was simple: sell solutions to the recurring headaches of the refrigeration industry, not just products. That modest start became the seed for everything that followed.
By 1994, Hudson was basically an importer and reseller of R-12, a refrigerant gas. The government had decided to ban its production in 1996, so buyers rushed to grab what they could. Hudson went public that November, and within five months its share price more than quadrupled past twenty dollars. Investors were paying for a shortage that seemed guaranteed.
Then Hudson made a big bet. It stopped buying imported refrigerant and reselling it, and instead set out to build a nationwide network of distribution and reclamation centers, buying up domestic sources along the way. The logic was ownership rather than middleman margins. But the shift raised costs and execution risk right away, and the stock gave back its early gains fast.
Brian Coleman became chairman, president and CEO in 2020. He had joined as finance chief back in 1997 and later ran operations, so he knew the business inside out. He took over after the death of founder Kevin Zugibe, and he set about strengthening the company's competitive position in a tough market.
In late 2025, Kenneth Gaglione was named chairman, president and CEO. He wasn't a stranger: he had run operations at Hudson from 2020 to 2023 and came with experience from Honeywell's refrigerant business. The board said it wanted him to lead the next phase of growth, with more of it coming from the company's own efforts and from deals and partnerships.
That same year, Hudson was awarded a U.S. Defense Logistics Agency contract worth roughly $210 million for the first five-year stretch. Hudson had held the prime contractor role since 2016, and this time it won again after a competitive rebidding. It was proof the government side of the business remained solid.
Then came a hard reminder of how cyclical refrigerants can be. In the third quarter of 2026, revenue fell nearly 20% from a year earlier and missed expectations, and earnings per share came in far below what analysts wanted. Buyers had plenty of inventory and prices for HFCs were low, so volume dropped and prices fell. The stock plunged. The CEO said the company had chosen profitable sales over chasing volume, a bet that hurt the numbers but was meant to protect the business.
Hudson is headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, and it has a long history — it was founded in the 1980s and has been publicly traded for decades. The company's bet is simple: as the world slowly tightens the rules on these gases, the ability to recover and reuse them becomes more valuable, and Hudson wants to own that plumbing.
Saved answer · last researched 5 Nov 2026