The Institute of Refrigeration (IOR) presented five awards and launched its Industry Skills Alliance at its 126th Annual Dinner in London on 12 February 2026. The dinner recognised individual contributions advancing the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump (RACHP) sector and a UK project focused on reducing environmental emissions from cooling.
The J&E Hall International Gold Medal went to Professor Judith Evans FInstR, of Refrigeration Developments and Testing and London South Bank University, for contributions to energy and carbon reduction by optimising refrigeration performance throughout the food cold chain. The IOR said her work has focused on system optimisation across food processing, cold storage, transport, retail and consumer handling in developed and developing countries, including research on raising frozen food storage temperatures to minus 15 degrees that was presented at COP28 in Dubai.
Jake Locke of the University of Warwick received the Ted Perry Memorial Award for Student Research for “Investigation of salt mixtures for resorption heat pump cycles”. The IOR said his work develops a sorption-based heating and cooling system using salt mixtures and ammonia as a low-GWP refrigerant. The RACHP Engineering Technician Section Lifetime Achievement Award went to Andy Clarke of Airconuk for his career in hands-on roles, including training and installation standardisation work.
The Lightfoot Medal for the best IOR Talk and Paper of the previous year was awarded jointly to Catarina Marques FInstR and Dermot Cotter FInstR for “Energy Usage in the Industrial Refrigeration Sector: Food, Drink, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Refrigeration”. The authors donated the £500 prize [approx. US$630] to the IOR President’s Fund to support and advance training across the industry.
The IOR Beyond Refrigeration Environmental Award was awarded to Space Engineering for its Booster Integrated Solution Plus, which replaced multiple HFC refrigeration plants and gas boilers with a smaller all-electric solution using CO2 refrigerant. The IOR said monitored performance showed high efficiencies and verified carbon savings of around 180 tonnes over its lifecycle, along with a commercial return, and highlighted the project’s controls strategy and continuous-improvement approach.
In her dinner speech, IOR President Lisa-Jayne Cook FInstR announced the IOR Industry Skills Alliance, a forum intended to align training provision with employer needs across the sector and to act as an authoritative voice to awarding bodies, government and policy stakeholders. The Alliance will organise quarterly meetings and will be organised by IOR Education Outreach Project Manager Matt Harvey. Cook invited members to get involved, saying: “Because skills don’t fix themselves. They improve when we come together, share insight, and take collective responsibility for shaping the future.”