The inaugral Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Expo (RACE) in Brisbane was a huge success with more than 200 companies attending the two-day event last month.
The event featured 32 exhibitors, trade show demonstrations and an informative speaker program that was well attended.
Actrol's national sales and marketing leader, Andrew Leach, said the response was overwhelming for a first time event.
The RACE Expo was held at Brisbane’s Royal International Convention Centre, a state-of-the-art venue that is less than two years old and just 1.5km from the CBD.
Leach said the initial idea for RACE came about last year. "The idea of having a fully-fledged refrigeration and air conditioning trade show in Brisbane, was born simply because there has not been this type of event in the region for many years," he said.
Leach said an important aspect of RACE is that it was created with the customer in mind.
"The idea was to not only showcase new products and ideas but to also provide a glimpse into the future," he said.
"With a unique combination of products on show, a vast cross-section of presentations from all facets of the industry,
demonstrations, show specials, door prizes and the odd ice-bucket challenge, there was something for everyone."
In total more than 200 companies attended from as far as North Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne, even Adelaide.
"The instant positive feedback received from visitors during the event was only the beginning. Already we have requests from exhibitors to be part of the next RACE trade show," Leach said.
In addition to the exhibition, the impressive speaker lineup included a session on why compressors fail by Actrol's Ray Findlay, an outline of Buffalo heat exchanger technology was presented by Bitzer Australia's Luke Dowling and the R22 phaseout and R427A was outlined by Arkema's Kylie Farrelley.
Michael Hettrick of Honeywell Refrigerants talked about Soltice Low GWP refrigerants and Dunnair's David Kovacs did a session on Australia's first watercooled inverter.
This was just a few of the presentations which were presented over two days.