I started in the refrigeration industry as soon as I left school so I have been in the trade for over 40+ years. It has been a fantastic journey the whole way from my apprenticeship right up until owning my own business in Zimbabwe as well as in New Zealand. Refrigeration has allowed me to travel overseas and work and experience different cultures along the way, I’ve worked on every everything from domestic, commercial to industrial refrigeration which is all being a great opportunity
Along this wonderful journey I’ve learnt so many different skills from the basics of learning how to install commission, service and maintain equipment. Owning my own business also allowed me to look into the design side of things in the trade. The trade also gives us so many other skills such as electrical, plumbing, building, welding and mechanical work which really makes us a Jack of all trades which allows us to be diverse and think outside the square a lot of times.
I am very passionate about the trade and I want to keep passing this passion onto our future generations and try and get them involved in this awesome trade. I’m trying to give back to the industry as well as promote the refrigeration/air-conditioning trade and World Refrigeration Day has allowed this to happen in order to highlight the importance of refrigeration/air-conditioning throughout the world as the reality is without it, we wouldn’t be where we all are today, this trade has evolved so much since I started it in the 80s and the technology is always evolving which allows us to keep learning about new things. It’s fantastic to see how we’ve gone in a circle in regards to refrigerants starting off with naturals moving onto the synthetics and back to naturals which has been proven is the only way to go.
So to all those boys and girls out there who are wanting to get into a trade, in my personal opinion you’ll never find one better than Refrigeration and Air-conditioning and you will learn so many different #coolskills along the way, you will not have any regrets.
