We are proud to announce that JD Cooling Group have recently received the Armed Forces Covenant (Bronze Award) from the government’s Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS) in acknowledgement of our commitment to support both existing and ex-armed forces personnel within the business.

 

As part of its pledge, JD Cooling has long been committed to treating serving and ex-armed forces personnel and their families with acknowledgement, fairness and respect, through demonstrating and advocating support to the armed forces community.

 

JD Cooling fully backs those who proudly protect our nation through actively supporting employees from an armed forces background. The company are advocates for the Reservist scheme and work with employees to ensure they can fulfil their role with the armed forces, with full reassurance that they can return to their position once they’ve completed their duties.

 

 

To receive recognition from ERS, organisations much first be self-nominated by employees. It was JD Cooling’s Kevin Rodgers, Group Health and Safety Manager, who nominated his employer for the award. Kevin was responsible for deployment in Afghanistan whilst serving as a Regimental Quartermaster and Royal Engineer and he has since retired from the forces.

 

Kevin said, “JD Cooling are a very approachable company and they really understand what armed forces personnel have been through. They promote mental health and wellbeing in the workplace and are happy to have those kind of conversations with staff. The company always acknowledges Armed Forces Day each year and champions its serving and ex-military staff working in the business on these occasions. The company’s attitude and ethos is accepting and supportive, and it’s clear how much effort is invested into the scheme by the directors. I have no doubt JD Cooling will receive Silver and Gold awards for their support in the very near future.”

 

Colleague, Steven Garfoot, Senior Design Engineer in the JD Cooling Technical department in King’s Lynn, while continuing to serve as a corporal RAF Reservist, agrees. Since working for JD Cooling, he has completed two mobilisations including one operational tour.

 

Steven said, “JD Cooling has been highly supportive of my role, recognising the potential that military training and experiences can provide for the company. I feel that my service has never held me back within the company and I have always had JD Cooling’s full backing to ensure I meet the minimum commitments. Despite mandated mobilisations taking me away for extended periods of time – eight months last year and five months in 2016 – JD Cooling has supported me and made the process extremely simple, offering no obstructions to my service. On both occasions I returned to welcoming arms, as if I’d never left.”

 

John Dye, Group Chairman of JD Cooling, said: “We’re delighted to be nominated by our serving and retired armed forces personnel for this accolade. It’s an honour to be recognised but moreover we feel a greater privilege to have both veterans and serving personnel part of our team. Their skills, aptitude and dedication is a real asset to the business. We will continue to pledge our commitment to our award-winning employee scheme and always do what we can to support all team members from all backgrounds and walks of life.”

We are delighted to announce that JD Cooling Group has won the Environmental Collaboration Award at this year’s RAC Cooling Awards, alongside Softripe, Frigotec GmbH and Worldwide Fruit Limited for the UK’s first installation of the revolutionary Softripe ripening system.

 

 

Furthermore, JD Cooling were ‘Highly Commended’ within the World Refrigeration Cold Chain category for Softripe.

 

 

Judges commented, “The winners present a fine example of partnership between the refrigeration industry, technology specialists and the client. Judges liked the fact that the solution reduced energy usage while improving the end products’ quality, and reduced waste through reducing damage to the fruit – and the future for the UK fruit industry. We like the dedication of JD Cooling to provide full-service provision to their client under difficult circumstances.”

 

Softripe is a new ripening technology that uses controlled atmosphere conditions to ripen fruit without stress – monitoring its respiration and applying the exact, controlled atmosphere that the fruit requires to ripen to its optimum condition.

 

Softripe has reinvented a process, based on forced temperature changes and distribution that has not changed fundamentally for many years.

 

 

 

Although JD Cooling previously evolved the technology with EC fans, glycol and heat recovery to ripen using waste heat from the cooling process, Softripe has enabled us to take a big step forward in ripening technology.

 

By combining lower temperatures with finite control of oxygen, carbon dioxide and ethylene, and adding in higher relative humidity and temperatures controlled according to exact needs to the fruit at each point within its ripening cycle, the overall result is less stress for the fruit and a ripening cycle of around 40 per cent shorter than the conventional process.

 

The RAC Cooling Awards, held virtually on Wednesday 5^th December recognises the best of the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump industry.

 

Congratulations to all the finalists and winners, it truly shows how amazing the industry is – creating solutions all whilst working amidst unprecedented restrictions in 2020.

 

For more information about Softripe here, or contact us on 01553 767 446, or info@jdcooling.com.

We are delighted to be highly commended for our Group website within the marketing initiative category at this year’s ACR & Heat Pump Awards.

 

The annual awards, hosted by Sky Sport’s Jeff Stelling and organised by ACR Journal, saw over 400 guests come together at Manchester’s Midland Hotel on Thursday 23 January to celebrate achievements from across the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump industry.

 

Employing Norwich-based Shorthose Russell, a marketing agency, the new JD Cooling Group website launched in early November 2018. With impressive results, including strong upturns in both traffic and search rankings, the website continues to grow in strength. Users and sessions have increased by 64% and 65% year on year (YoY). A 37% rise in organic users demonstrate the positive impact of improved search engine rankings.

 

Winning the marketing initiative award was World Refrigeration Day for their incredible work launching the campaign to raise awareness and understanding of the role that the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump industry and its technology play in modern life and society. By 26^th June 2019, more than 200 trade associations and professional bodies representing over 2 million members were supporting WRD, with their logo translated into 34 languages by volunteers, with requests for 10 more.

 

This is a truly amazing achievement and one that JD Cooling Group are proud to be a part of and support. We congratulate Stephen Gill and his team for their fantastic work.

We are pleased to announce that JD Cooling Group has been selected as finalists for ‘Website of the Year’ at next year’s ACR News Awards.

 

Going up against four other companies, voting has now opened for members of the refrigeration and heat pump community to cast their vote and decide who will be crowned winners.

 

The ACR News Awards takes place at The Chelsea Harbour Hotel on Thursday 26 March 2020 and will celebrate the achievements and successes of the air conditioning and refrigeration industry.

 

To cast you vote, please visit: http://www.acrnewsawards.com/vote/, where you can also vote for your Wholesaler / Distributor of the Year.

Congratulations to our Scotland trainee engineer Josh Collins, 20, from Auchtermuchty, Fife, for winning the Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Bronze Medal at the SkillFridge final at WorldSkills UK Live.

 

Supported by BESA Training (British Educational Suppliers Association), Josh was one of six regional heat winners from around the UK competing in the WorldSkills UK Live event at the NEC, Birmingham during week commencing 18 November, with winners crowned in a glittering ceremony on Saturday 23 November.

 

WorldSkills saw over 500 apprentices and students competing in over 70 different disciplines including refrigeration and air conditioning, hospitality and building services, with the hope to secure the opportunity to represent the UK at the WorldSkills Finals in Shanghai in 2021.

 

Trainee engineer Josh joined JD Cooling Group in Scotland as an apprentice in 2015 following a successful work experience placement earlier that year. During his time with JD Cooling Group, Josh has progressed and flourished, working on a range of systems such as ammonia and glycol secondary refrigerant systems within the service and maintenance department.

The winners of the 2019 Food Processing Awards were announced by multi award-winning comedian, Dominic Holland, at an awards ceremony held at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Coventry on 17th October.

 

JD Industrial (JDI) were delighted to accept the Environmental / Sustainability Solution or Project award for their revolutionary heat recovery system.

Judges were impressed by the project being undertaken by JD Cooling Group to create an energy-efficient secondary cooling system for a client’s new fresh produce cold store. The project saw JD Industrial (JDI), (part of the JD Cooling Group), develop a revolutionary heat recovery system using the client’s existing biogas engine. The original system discharged all exhaust gases into the atmosphere. The new method saw JDI install two inline heat recovery heat exchangers, which now extracts the waste heat from the exhaust gases and provides ‘free’ heating to the new factory.

 

The new heat recovery systems will generates up to 1.3 megawatts of 85^oC hot water for factory process and space heating, and up to £180,981 saving per year of natural gas usage; 2,008,404kg CO₂ saving.

We are delighted to announce that JD Industrial (JDI) has been awarded ISO 9001 Quality Management Accreditation.

 

Awarded by NQA , the accreditation verifies that we meet ISO 9001’s quality management system standards. It also verifies that our method of manufacturing a product or providing a service has been designed to ensure a high-quality outcome for our customers.

 

To find out more, please visit: https://www.nqa.com/en-gb/certification/standards/iso-9001 

The winners of the Cleanroom Technology Awards, sponsored by Micronclean, have been revealed and four companies have taken home the industry recognition for best innovation, facility, exhibitor product technology and innovation.

 

JD Cooling Group celebrated winning the Best Cleanroom Facility award for its cleanroom with sanitisation mode ISO 14644-1. The jury appreciated the sheer complexity of the project to meet the classification standards of the existing room but also meet the demands of the area being sanitised while maintaining validation conditions.

 

Commenting on the achievement, JD Cooling Group’s business development manager Jodi Whitehead, said: “A fantastic accolade for JD Cooling. We’re very grateful for the organisers for this fantastic event!”

 

John Dye, JD Cooling Group’s chairman said, “This is an incredible award and we’re so pleased to have been recognised for the work we’re doing within the innovative cleanroom technology sector. Such a coveted prize recognises the complexities in designing and building cleanrooms. There’s no one-size-fits all, with each project bringing its own specific requirements and challenges. Our recent projects alone have ranged from those for pharmaceutical companies to Formula 1 teams.”

 

The two day Cleanroom Technology Conference, held at the NCC in Birmingham on Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd May brought together leaders and innovators within the cleanroom and contamination control industry to take a look at industry trends, standards and future of design and technologies.

Many congratulations to Oliver Drury for receiving the runner-up prize at the ACR Trainee of the Year Awards 2018 and to Evan Minns who also saw success, by coming in the Top 10.

 

Oliver and Evan who are based in the King’s Lynn service and maintenance department, were two of eight other trainees/apprentices from the world of refrigeration and air conditioning that saw their success celebrated at The Belfry in Sutton Coldfield on Thursday 6th December 2018.

 

Oliver Drury began a modern apprenticeship with JD Cooling Systems three years ago. Service director Richard Corby said: “Oliver has adapted fantastically well to new skills and his understanding of complex systems has been rewarded with more responsibility, being part of the service team and on the call out rota. His enthusiasm and commitment to training has rubbed off on the other apprentices, as he is now having apprentices working with him. He continually takes on new responsibility and is never worried about trying different tasks he always takes the opportunity to learn information from others within his peer group.”

 

Jason Clark, senior trainer consultant from Grimsby Institute, said: “Oliver demonstrates a high level of understanding of both practical and theoretical principles for the duration in the industry. I am sure that Oliver will continue to prove an asset to his company and to the industry, I have no doubt that he will become an accomplished engineer.”

 

Oliver received £500 and prizes from Sauermann UK, ITE UK, Dean & Wood and the IOR. Evan received £200, donated by Dean & Wood, plus prizes from ITE UK and the IOR.

On the evening of Thursday 22^nd November, the JD Cooling Group won the overall Business of the Year award at the Norfolk Business Awards 2018. We are beyond delighted with this amazing accolade, with judges commenting, “This company is one of the largest independent contractors in its sector in the UK, growing from a one-man band 18 years ago to now employing 100 people across five regional sites.

“Its growth, strong profitability and excellent customer service feedback has been achieved by being a totally people-focused business, the extent to which I have not seen before.”

Held at the Norfolk Showground Arena and presented by comedian Katherine Ryan, the awards celebrate outstanding talent from Norfolk’s deep and diverse business community. In total, 13 awards were handed out to Norfolk’s homegrown business community – in front of 550 guests.

This wasn’t the only success for the JD team on the night, where the Group were shortlisted as finalists within the Large Business category – pipped to the post by Mills & Reeve; whilst John Dye was a finalist for the Director of the Year.

JD Cooling’s managing director called the accolade, “a real privilege” after seeing the other companies on show. He went on, “What a fantastic evening it’s been tonight. It’s opened my eyes to what a fantastic group of businesses we’ve got in Norfolk. I feel a bit lost in such great company. Thank you to everybody here for doing what you do – for yourselves, for your employees and for the community at large.”

You can see all the photos from the night and read about all the other winners here – https://www.edp24.co.uk/business/norfolk-business-awards-winners-2018-jd-cooling-group-katherine-ryan-1-5791782