Star Refrigeration has announced it has been shortlisted for two accolades at the prestigious RAC Cooling Industry Awards 2021. Taking place on 21^st October 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.

Known for championing diversity in the 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.

Dr 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 and also includes a three-course dinner with wine, evening entertainment, a drinks reception and a private networking area.

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 has taken strides to improve diversity in the sector not only within the company, but also in the local community and with a global outreach as far as Africa. 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. The company also providing funding to guarantee places for five women from Africa on the training programme to empower them to reach school children in Africa. In addition, the company continues to lead by example by providing part time and flexible working opportunities, enhanced maternity, paternity and shared parental leave.

Catherine McCombes, HR Manager at Star Refrigeration, said “Traditionally women are the main caregivers which has been shown to have an adverse effect on career and progression opportunities”

“We believe that by providing enhanced maternity pay as well as real part time and flexible working arrangements to support women in the workplace, encourages a return to their roles. Extending this enhancement to both paternity and shared parental leave is normalising shared leave; enabling either parent to take time off to care for children and lessening the impact on career progression”.

Star’s data-driven analysis software Ethos has played a huge part in receiving the nomination for the environmental collaboration. Over just under five years Star has implemented the technology in Asda’s distribution centres across the UK to help drive down the supermarket’s energy usage.

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”.

In this category, judges will be looking for evidence of how bringing together different disciplines has created a successful outcome – demonstrating contributions beyond simple customer-client relationships.

To find out more about the Cooling Industry Awards 2021 and book tickets, visit: https://coolingawards.racplus.com/book_now

For more information about the partnership between Star’s, Asda and City FM, go to https://www.star-ref.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/ASDA_Ethos_Case_Study.pdf

For more information about Star’s award-winning Ethos monitoring software, go to https://www.star-ref.co.uk/service-categories/data-monitoring/