The West Midlands-based air conditioning specialists won the award for its new range of 'Direct Adiabatic' cooling units, which deliver considerable energy savings and dramatically reduces CO2 emissions.
The impressive accolade was presented to Weatherite by Lord Redesdale, the CEO of the Energy Managers Association (EMA), at an awards ceremony held at the EMEX Energy Management Exhibition at EXCEL, London.
Lord Rosendale said: “Weatherite’s highly efficient energy-reducing cooling system delivers substantial savings across a number of key areas. In terms of capital and operational costs and environmental sustainability, Weatherite is a worthy winner of the EMA Energy Product of the Year Award.”
Weatherite’s innovative, low-energy cooling system was commissioned by a leading telecommunications company, which has an extensive estate of telco exchanges, datacentres and comms rooms located across the UK. It was looking for an energy saving, refrigerant free, cooling solution that could be used to replace the existing cooling equipment housed within these large establishments thereby substantially reducing its energy usage per annum.
As a result of extensive research and development activity, Weatherite designed, tested and manufactured the cooling system which uses water and outside air as the cooling mediums, resulting in exceptional energy savings eliminating any GWP and ODP impact from refrigerant usage.
To date, Weatherite has manufactured and installed over 800 direct adiabatic cooling units and is currently involved in installing many more.
Weatherite Group Director, Tim Whitehouse, said: “We are absolutely delighted to win this award and to be recognised as energy-saving cooling pioneers is a great achievement.
“IT mission critical infrastructures such as telecommunication exchanges, data centres, communications rooms and switchrooms, generate vast amounts of heat-24 hours a day. The consequences of a breakdown in a critical IT system could be catastrophic, and costly, and so it is a hugely important that they are maintained at optimum conditions – 365 days a year.
“We have worked tirelessly alongside our client, and continue to do so, to ensure we meet their energy-saving objectives, and significantly reduce their consumption costs.”
Costs of cooling these valuable assets can account for up to 30 per cent of the annual energy usage. The advantages of using Weatherite’s Direct Adiabatic cooling solution which uses free outside air and water as the refrigerant (natural) provides substantial savings concerning environmental sustainability.
Mr Whitehouse added: “I’d like to thank our talented telecoms team who’ve worked extremely hard on developing this system and subsequently winning the award. The technical aspect is highly impressive and we’re over the moon it’s recognised by the EMA.”
The EMA Awards, which is now in its fifth year, include nine categories, with winners that represent the best of the exceptional talent and inspiration in the energy management industry.
This comes just months after a £250K investment to extend its factory facility to cater for an upturn in sales.
The new adhesive machine (pictured) is an integral part of the company’s manufacturing process and helps form the rigid, strong casing for all the company’s products. Weatherite produces thousands of air handling units every year for its extensive blue-chip customers including M&S, Tesco, Virgin, EE and JLP.
Group Chairman, John Whitehouse, said: “We are always looking at improvements, whether via investments into machinery, or processes for people. Being competitive is imperative to our future and the manufacturing facility is the heart of the business. If that isn’t running smoothly, the business will inevitably suffer.
“The new machine works by forming an unbreakable bond between the insulating sheet and the inner and outer panels of all our kit. If it fails, it stops production which could be detrimental to the business, especially given our production process is extremely tight. The old machine wasn’t performing as it should, and given that we had zero aftersales support, we decided to buy a better-quality machine that was supported by a reputable service and repair team.
“We’ve opted for a run and standby policy which means if one machine fails, we have another on standby, thus our production lines remain extremely efficient.”
Following a significant growth in the Telecommunications sector, the new machine and extension to the factory facility, will ensure turnaround times are quicker and the business can allow for growth.