UK – RW was last night named the wholesaler of the year at the National ACR awards ceremony in Birmingham. RW was  formerly owned by the American group United Refrigeration Wholesale and was established in the early 90’s.

In 2011 United Refrigeration UK was acquired by the Swedish wholesale giant Beijer Ref, who decided that United should remain as an ‘independent’ UK refrigeration and AC wholesaler. Beijer Ref had previously identified the business as a strategic acquisition since it offered strong synergy with other companies within the group.

The business, which is now known under RW Refrigeration Wholesale,  operates from 12 branches across the United Kingdom and employs 43 members of staff, with a Strategic Management Team who have 90 years of combined experience in the ACR industry. The group have stated that the company’s strategic management team come from  varied backgrounds, offering solid experience in Sales, Marketing, Product Management, Procurement and Technical Support.

RW is a wholesaler of multi-brand products, offering a £2.2 million stock holding of over 6,000 products which include air conditioning equipment, ancillaries, refrigeration capital equipment and components from world leading suppliers such as Searle, Danfoss, Daikin, LG and National Refrigerants. Capital equipment selection and quotation turnaround is guaranteed within one hour, breaking through normal time boundaries for pre-sales support.

The company claimed that it is a company requirement for every member of the RW team to be trained within the ‘Introduction to Refrigeration & Introduction to Air Conditioning’ training scheme. These internal training schemes are described as being internal courses developed purely for the training of people working in wholesale and are unique within the RW group. The company further states that its RW team is also given general ‘business training’ to understand a profit and loss account and to understand the basis of gross and net profit.

Despite the multitude of internal training schemes, external training companies are also employed to give point of sale and telephone sales training, courses run throughout the year.  The company also have a declared policy of enforcing mandatory Health and safety, fork lift truck training and product handling training  within RW.

In addition to RW, the jury also highly commended Hawco while the panel of finalists also included Climate Center, CDL and Space Air​.