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NHS volunteers have raised almost £2,500 to help replace a 17-year-old minibus used to take more than 300 people a year to social groups and appointments Humber NHS Foundation Trust’s Voluntary Services team and the Trust’s charity, Health Stars, raised the money by holding a race night with Airco and Mitsubishi Electric. The event, held at Airco’s Goulton Street premises and including a free bar and buffet, was such a resounding success that the team has now placed an order to lease a new minibus to provide a service which does not qualify for NHS funding. The vehicle will enable them to support even more people in the community who are at risk of loneliness and isolation, which have a profound effect on mental health. The new minibus will be fitted with wheelchair adaptations to make the service more accessible for people with mobility problems. Sam Grey, the Trust’s Voluntary Services manager, said: “The evening was really fun, lively and well attended. “It was great to see local businesses come together to support the cause, which included some very generous contributions in the final race, which was an auction. “The auctioneer commented that the amount raised, almost £500, was a record for him and he praised everyone for their incredible generosity.” Organisers were delighted with raffle prize donations from organisations including Tesco St Stephens, South Cave Falconry, Nando’s, York Racecourse, Beverley Racecourse, Lambwath pub and Leaf Hospitality. Andy Stubbs, Service Co-ordinator at Airco, said: “I meet regularly with the Trust’s Patient Services Manager, Virginia Hemingway, who asked if we could help raise funds for a new minibus. “We agreed the cause was fantastic and would provide us with a great opportunity to bring our contacts together for a fund-raising/networking event that would be fun but would ultimately have a serious and worthwhile objective. “I feel we achieved this and, as a result, hope to replicate the event on regular occasions to support the ongoing finance requirements for the bus.” The volunteers will attempt to raise £3,000 per year to help pay for the new vehicle, which is expected to arrive in January. www.airco.co.uk

Neil Fisher, MD Airco Refrigeration & Air Conditioning, has been shortlisted for a regional Institute of Directors Award. Fisher is up against two others for the overall Director of the Year prize in the IoD Yorkshire and the Humber Director of the Year Awards 2015 to be held at the Hilton Sheffield Hotel on June 11. The winner will go forward to the national awards which are this year being held at the Lancaster London Hotel on October 23. The annual IoD awards are designed to celebrate directors at the forefront of leadership excellence. Neil Fisher formed Hull-based Airco in 1991, growing the business from that of a sole trader to a market leading refrigeration and air conditioning specialist. The business is the largest of its type in East Yorkshire, employing around 80 people across offices in Hull, Immingham, Leeds, Milton Keynes and London. Originally, formed as predominantly a refrigeration contractor, Airco has expanded its disciplines over the years to now offer a full cold room design and build facility, together with detailed expertise on specialist refrigeration equipment. In addition, the company encompasses the full range of air conditioning, from complex process cooling solutions to heat pumps, from mobile units to full comfort cooling designs. It is a Daikin D1 Partner and a Mitsubishi Business Solutions Partner. No stranger to awards, Neil Fisher won the Hull Daily Mail Young Businessman of the Year in 2004 and Workforce Development award in 2005 for designing and instigating a comprehensive apprenticeship scheme. In 2012 Airco was a finalist in the Yorkshire Business Masters awards, and in 2013 the company won the HDM Medium Size Business of the Year.

We have now completed the move to our new Hull HQ.  Airco House, on Goulton Street, is a 16,000 sq ft building overlooking the A63 which is been extensively refurbished and remodelled to suit Airco. The first floor offices are finished, and feature state of the art intelligent building management including the latest thinking in climate control and LED low energy lighting. Solar is in the process of being added. When finished, the building’s energy production and usage will be measured in real time and displayed on screens within the offices.It will become the best working model & showroom in the North of England featuring sustainable, renewable and efficient energy use. When fully transformed, the building will also include our new Premier Business Lounge, together with the comprehensive new training facility, the Airco Centre of Excellence. 

We are delighted to announce the launch of our new Airco Renewables division. Working alongside Airco’s other departments; they will offer a wide range of solar and related renewable technology solutions to new and existing customers. As part of Airco’s commitment to Renewable Energy we will be installing a 50kw solar scheme at our newly refurbished headquarters in Hull which will run alongside the leading air conditioning and heating technologies which have already been installed. The building will also feature real time monitoring, giving instant information on the building’s energy production, usage and energy recovery. Many customers are already showing a keen interest in the application of new solar and renewable solutions, and we are currently working with a variety of clients on a diverse range of applications. For more information contact Sales on 0800 772 0558 or email [email protected]

Airco were faced with an interesting challenge to help a National Telecoms company within an operationally sensitive environment.The brief was to reduce both their carbon footprint & operational costs whilst maintaining an acceptable space temperature inside a critical data centre and test area. The existing air conditioning system was reaching the end of its serviceable working life and operated on refrigerant R22 which will become illegal to service as of the 1st January 2015 (EC/1005/2009). The other issue was that the air conditioning equipment consumed more power than the critical equipment located within the room thus wasting costly energy.Key members of staff from Airco & the client’s Estates Department set up a team to explore all options, which included energy consumption and the reduction of its greenhouse gas emmisions.We looked at many conventional mechanical cooling options, none of which produced the desired outcome.Airco then designed, installed & commissioned an innovative evaporative cooling solution. This in itself involved many challenges, not least convincing the client’s management that introducing water to a data centre was a viable option! Nevertheless the go-ahead was given, and the finished system, which uses both fresh air and water as the medium for cooling, has proved a huge success.Energy costs have been reduced by up to 90%, and as Airco designed the system with free cooling in mind, it is likely that simple fresh air will suffice to cool the building for the majority of the year.Other benefits include the eradication of ‘hot spots’, with an even space temperature now maintained throughout the room. The Power Use Efficiency (PUE), a measurement within data centres of the energy consumed by the computer equipment vs the energy needed to power the cooling equipment and lighting, has dramatically improved. Chris Goodwin, Commercial Director at Airco, who led the project, is delighted with the outcome. “It’s great to be involved in a scheme such as this” said Chris. “We relished the opportunity to design an innovative, sustainable solution for a blue chip client. The end result has surpassed our expectations, and I suspect we will be designing many similar systems in the near future. The next stage will be to design a system that includes PV panels. Our aim is to get the data centres as close to carbon neutral as we can”.  

Hull’s KC Stadium Sports Arena is now known as the Airco Arena after a sponsorship deal with local contractor Airco Refrigeration and Air Conditioning. The Airco Arena is a key sporting location in Hull and situated next to the KC Stadium, home of Hull City FC and Hull FC football and rugby teams. The Arena regularly plays host to major sporting events including British Open Squash and the National Netball League, and is also the home of the Hull City Official Supporters Club on matchdays at the KC Stadium. Established in Hull in 1991, and now employing over 80 people from five offices, Airco is one of the UK’s leading air conditioning & refrigeration contractors, providing design, installation, service and maintenance to a growing blue chip private and public sector client base. Airco will now have their branding displayed on the exterior and interior of the arena during a four-year sponsorship. Neil Fisher, managing director of Airco Refrigeration and Air Conditioning said: “This sponsorship provides us the opportunity to showcase our brand on a regional and national scale to the thousands of visitors the Arena attracts each year.”