Star Refrigeration nominated for Diversity Impact and Environmental Collaboration awards

Star Refrigeration has been shortlisted for two awards at the RAC Cooling Industry Awards 2021.

Known for championing diversity in industry and taking the lead on external inclusion projects, Star has been nominated for the Diversity Impact award. Additionally, the company has been recognised for its Environmental Collaboration with Asda and City FM, an initiative which to date has saved the supermarket chain 1,100 tonnes of carbon emissions.

Taking place on October 21, 2021 at the Grosvenor House Ballroom London, the award ceremony is envisioned to be a long overdue industry celebration following last year’s online event during the pandemic.

Rob Lamb, Group Sales and Marketing Director at Star Refrigeration said, “We are thrilled to be shortlisted for these two categories as they really capture our ethos. We are proud of our achievements in the environmental and diversity arenas and hope to add to our growing award collection in October”. The highly anticipated awards ceremony will be hosted by a surprise celebrity compere.

The Diversity Impact Award aims to recognise progress by companies who are improving and championing diversity in all its forms – especially encouraging women and ethnic minorities into the cooling industry. Star’s sponsorship of the University of Glasgow’s FemEng project – to encourage more women into engineering – has resulted in an increase of over 100% in applications to study engineering at The University of Rwanda. In collaboration with World Refrigeration Day and STEMazing, Star has supported the development of a network of female STEM ambassadors which includes two of Star’s female engineers.

Star’s data-driven analysis software Ethos has played a huge part in receiving the nomination for the environmental collaboration. Ethos collects data from refrigeration plants in real time and the cloud-based software then compares actual operating performance with a computer model of theoretical performance at the given ambient conditions and operating temperatures. This comparison of actual performance with the ’digital twin’, highlights any energy gap and enables the Star Data Analytics (SDA) team to identify problems and suggest corrective actions to reduce energy usage to meet environmental goals. Ethos can help owners of temperature-controlled facilities meet their Climate Change Agreement (CCA) targets, ensuring they receive a 92% reduction on the Climate Change Levy.

Anne Flanagan, Business Development Manager at Star Data Analytics, said “We are delighted to have been nominated for the Environmental Collaboration Award. The partnership between Star, City FM and Asda has delivered an extraordinary outcome which has resulted in savings of 5GWh on energy costs and over 1,100 of CO2 emissions over the last four and a half years across six of Asda’s sites optimised with Ethos software. The nomination reinforces our commitment to working together with our customers as a team to meet their environmental goals”.

The head judge for this year’s panel will be Jacinta Caden, technical director at USystems. She is taking over the role from John Skelton, refrigeration manager with Marks and Spencer, who will remain on the panel.