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As part of a regional strategy to meet increased demand for Carel products across the Asia Pacific, Kevin Marr has been promoted to the role of chief executive.

Marr was officially appointed the CEO for AAPAC South which covers South Africa and South East Asia including Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

Marr said the promotion is part of a “key strategy by Carel to be more regionalised and to ensure decisions are much closer to the customer.”

“I am still functioning as the managing director for Australia but the additional responsibilities are due to recent growth in the region,” he said.

“This growth is being driven by our substantial investment in high efficiency solutions, customer interest in energy savings is driving the market.

“This investment is being realised in technologies such as advanced indirect evaporative cooling, which is being adopted at the Barangaroo site in Sydney and BLDC compressor control solutions.”

Marr said Carel is also investing in its sales structure with the opening of a new sales office in Kuala Lumpur last year.

“The office has employed sales and technical support staff and the company has also acquired a strong partner in Thailand to ensure we have a direct presence in that important market,” he said.

With four overseas based shareholders, Marr founded Eurotec Australia in 1995 and it was the exclusive distributor for Carel in Australia. Back then Marr was the general manager. However, in September 2001 Carel acquired Eurotec creating Carel Australia with Marr in the role of managing director.

Today Carel has 15 staff across three offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Demand for energy efficient solutions is being seen across the entire HVAC market, according to Benjamin Freas, senior research analyst with Navigant Research.

He said global revenue for commercial energy-efficient HVAC systems is set to increase from $22.8 billion in 2015 to $47.5 billion in 2024.

“Almost universally, building owners are investing in HVAC equipment to lower energy consumption, lower operating costs, and lower the impact on the environment,” Freas said. “Not only is this driving incremental increases in the efficiency of equipment, it is shifting design standards—we’re seeing variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems being designed in place of unitary systems and the use of heat pumps is expanding.”