Thermo King is a strategic brand of Trane Technologies (NYSE:TT) a global climate innovator. Together with the strategic brand Trane®, we offer a portfolio of environmentally responsible products and services, and bring efficient and sustainable climate solutions to buildings, homes, and transportation.
Area Sales Manager UK at Thermo King
Thermo King is the global leader in intelligent end-to-end temperature-controlled cold chain solutions with over 80 years of history in cold chain expertise. Thermo King provides refrigerated transport solutions for Road (truck, trailer, bus) and Marine, Rail and Air. Temperature ranges for our product portfolio range from -70 to +40 degrees Celsius, in both refrigeration and storage. We are also telematics industry experts in monitoring and maintaining temperature control for the transport of critical goods like medicine and vaccines, and large quantities of food carried in refrigerated vans, trucks, trailers and across marine, rail and air. Jon Jerrard-Dinn, Area Sales Manager UK at Thermo King spoke to Warehouse & Logistics News.
What products or services does your company offer?
Thermo King pioneered transport temperature control in 1938 and since then, has led the way in delivering innovations and leading-edge technologies. The comprehensive Thermo King product range includes refrigeration units for long haul, inner-city deliveries, last-mile deliveries, HVAC rail and bus, Cold Storage Solutions, marine and air. All our products and solutions are backed by an extensive, global dealer network that provides expert, factory-trained service.
What are your most recent product innovations?
Thermo King solutions advance clean, quiet and high-performance transport capabilities, including electrification and decarbonisation, for trucks and trailers. These products fit alternative power sources and offer unmatched performances, while reducing energy consumption and emissions. They can help our customers run their businesses more economically and more sustainably.
We just introduced three new trailer refrigeration systems expanding the Advancer portfolio, renowned for its performance, temperature control, unrivalled system efficiency and fleet connectivity.
The new Advancer Spectrum brings a new level of performance to the multi-temperature trailer with fastest temperature recovery and pulldown, and highest refrigeration capacity on the market. The Advancer Spectrum delivers up to 30% savings on fuel costs compared to the market average. The service interval rate is lower up to 30% and unscheduled maintenance by up to 60%.
The new Advancer AxlePower is a smart energy generating system that captures energy from the axle into a low or zero-emission, autonomous power source for the refrigeration unit. Developed in partnership with BPW, the Advancer AxlePower is a fully integrated, tractor independent system that combines BPW’s ePower axle with Thermo King refrigeration unit and battery storage technology.
Third is the engineless, electric Advancer-e. It is power-agnostic and compatible with all major engine-alternative power sources including the AxlePower, Frigoblock’s Envirodrive alternator and inverter technology, Thermo King’s Energ-E battery pack, and shore-power when stationed at the depot.
For small and large trucks for inner-city and city-to-city distribution we presented the new electric E-Series, a unit designed from the ground up for electric light commercial vehicles (LCV). The E-Series is powered directly by the LCV’s battery, while the patented power distribution and management controls optimise the supply and demand of power to deliver optimal temperature-control and minimise the impact on the vehicle’s autonomy.
Also, new VX-Series features a compact new design that enables both nose- and roof-mount applications, and weighs half the weight of the predecessor units enabling customers to carry up to 80 kg more payload during each delivery.
Within our Frigoblock portfolio, the latest innovations include the EK Whisper electric undermount refrigeration systems offering reduced noise for multi-drop operations and combining high capacity, rapid pulldown, and no direct carbon emissions. I would also mention the FK2 unit for urban distribution – electrically powered and featuring Frigoblock’s proven alternator technology.
What are the major trends and developments affecting your category and your customers, and how are you responding?
Innovation to decarbonise the cold chain is advancing rapidly and the industry is moving the needle on electrification and reducing carbon emissions. As people look to shop locally, more deliveries of refrigerated food will be occurring in urban and residential areas. Electrified refrigeration units are quieter than non-electrified units, resulting in a significant reduction in noise pollution and meaning deliveries can occur day or night with little disruption. Thermo King as a leading innovator in this space.
Can you tell us about any recent customer contract wins and how you helped the customer meet their challenges?
One of our recently completed projects was with Fife Creamery, Scotland’s leading chilled and frozen food wholesalers. They were looking to move away from diesel-powered refrigeration units to more environmentally friendly solutions. We installed high performance, compressor-driven Thermo King V-800 units on their 30 new 7.5-tonne trucks and two Frigoblock FK25RL inverter-powered systems on their new 18-tonne vehicles pulling drawbar trailers. This move to diesel-free refrigeration will annually allow Fife Creamery to reduce their fuel consumption by up to 200,000 litres, equivalent to emitting up to 526,000 kg of CO2 and corresponding to £350,000.
In what areas are you making technological advances?
Electrification is a common thread between the Trane Technologies Transport and HVAC business strategies. Thermo King has constantly moved towards improving the efficiencies and environmental footprint of the diesel-powered products, introducing electric stand-by and plug-in options, pioneering cryogenic refrigeration technology, and developing hybrid, as well as full-electric options that are combatting exhaust, CO2 and noise pollutions.
We have zero or low-emission solutions available in all segments of the market. This includes both hybrid and all-electric trailer and truck units, auxiliary power units, bus and commuter rail HVAC units, and marine and rail refrigerated units. It also includes solar products and power management accessories that assist with these low-emission capabilities.
As new products are added to our all-electric portfolio branded evolve, next year we will have electric solutions available in every cold chain segment in Europe.
What is the company’s commitment to social responsibility?
Trane Technologies has embedded sustainability into not just our strategy, but our company purpose.
Thermo King together with our other strategic brand Trane® bring efficient and sustainable climate solutions to buildings, homes, and transportation.
In 2014, we established our first set of climate commitments, and exceeded them two years early. Since then, our ambitions and actions have grown, with significant progress toward our bold 2030 Sustainability Commitments and 2050 Net-Zero carbon target. Customer use of our products is our largest area of opportunity to reduce carbon emissions. To match the scale of that opportunity, we set the Gigaton Challenge – a goal to reduce one billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) from our customer’s carbon footprints by 2030. Our math shows that this reduction equates to 2% of the world’s annual emissions – or, the annual emissions of Italy, France and the UK combined.
We often discuss the importance of cold chain integrity throughout the entire supply system in achieving the zero rate of food waste. Nothing is more critical than ensuring the “end to end” integrity of the cold chain – in the most universal sense: an interwoven supply chain system including marine reefer container refrigeration, truck, and trailer transport refrigeration, warehouse and retail refrigeration, and our home’s kitchen refrigerator. At Thermo King we minimise transportation risks to the cold chain. We help ensure that temperature control and safety measures are carried out during the entire transportation process and that the proper transport refrigeration equipment is chosen and utilised.
What improvements have you made to your customer service recently?
Customer service and aftersales support is provided via our global dealer network.
In 2022, one of our UK dealers, Marshall Fleet Solutions opened a state-of-the-art supersite. In a central location, this facility provides Thermo King customers with unrivalled support.
THERMO KING
07825 430052
jon.jerrarddinn@thermoking.com
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