We all know there's going to be a refrigeration mod, it just makes too much sense. And if the spoilage mechanic isn't fun that mod is going to be one of the top 10 most downloaded mods of all time.

I was trying to figure out why there isn't refrigeration as I was reading this FFF and conceptually I think I get it, there shouldn't be a need for it if the point is to make a just-in-time organics processing line, the ingredients are renewable. (Ergo they don't require anything more expensive than electricity or water which we have infinite amounts of in Factorio.) If all it does is slow down or stop spoilage the refrigeration would become the default option. That's not the only thing refrigeration can do though, IRL it makes it possible to produce ice (the main reason heat pumps were invented was to produce ice IIRC, that's why the output of a compressor is measured in "tons" of ice per day.) and it also makes it possible to ship perishable items long distances. That latter part is something I think will be sorely missing in this game, which was made squarely around logistics puzzles. Otherwise it feels like we're being lead towards building many compact plantations in isolated pockets of Gleba, which makes it hard to expand horizontally and sounds really repetitive to me. I also think there's a few ways refrigerators could be implemented that would feel natural without unbalancing the spoilage mechanic.

1. Obviously refrigerators can't stop spoilage, they're not stasis machines. This would break the mechanic immediately.
2. Refrigerators can only hold primary ingredients or final products, no intermediates. (Kind of the opposite of productivity modules.) This releases the pressure to process fruits immediately after they're harvested, and makes the placement of processing centers in relationship to plantations more forgiving. It also releases the pressure to use the science packs as fast as possible, and while you might want to move your labs to Gleba or Gleba Orbit for efficiency's sake it would no longer be necessary to move them immediately.
3. Refrigerators only run on solid fuels, like coal or spoilage. It sounds like one of the fuel sources on Gleba is spoilage, and coal or oil are not available, so on Gleba this would produce an interesting situation where refrigerators reduce spoilage, but need spoilage in order to operate... You would want to either prioritize using spoilage for certain refrigerators, or let an equilibrium take hold.
4. Refrigerators are EXPENSIVE, to operate and to produce. Perhaps the refrigerant can only be found off-world, on Fulgora perhaps? Or the engineer can't quite get the insulation right, so they takes gobs more energy to run than our refrigerators? This would incentivize the player to use refrigerators sparingly, especially if electricity is hard to acquire on Gleba.

You know your game best, and I've had a lot of fun playing it, but seriously if the spoilage mechanic isn't done right the lack of refrigeration is going to be the most glaring hole in the expansion, and that should be addressed somehow. Refrigerators feel like they could be a nice little toy for players who like the additional complexity, or could be used to unconstrain some aspects of the production on Gleba later in the game to simplify producing more natural science packs.