Acquisitions expand Johnson Controls service

UK: The purchase of McDowall Air Conditioning is the latest acquisition in Johnson Controls aim of expanding its HVAC installation and service capabilities in the UK.

The McDowall purchase at the end of March, follows acquisitions of H&C Contracts of Bordon, Hampshire, at the end of last year and Blackburn-based contractor East Lancashire Refrigeration in May 2019.

Johnson Controls says that these acquisitions are part of an ongoing strategic growth plan within the HVAC sector, allowing the company to diversify its product portfolio and fill geographical service gaps across the UK and Ireland.

Founded as a family business in 1972, Walsall-based McDowall Air Conditioning provides design, service and maintenance within the air conditioning and ventilation industry. In particular, McDowall’s expertise lies in the supply of HVAC solutions to the office building retrofit market. Johnson Controls says McDowall’s bring strong relationships with interior design and fit out firms, two areas where its own presence hasn’t been as strong, and provides opportunity to further diversity its HVAC portfolio.

The acquisitions also allows Johnson Controls to fill geographical service gaps, namely those in the North West, South West and West Midlands. In addition, the acquisitions allow Johnson Controls to move into new customer segments and diversify its product portfolio to better service new, existing and future customers.

“We started to look at acquisitions because we looked at the landscape of HVAC in the UK and Ireland, and we realised that we’re missing out on quite a big chunk of the packaged market, VRF, splits and so on,” explained Gail Hunter, general manager of HVAC UK&I.

“When you look at the size of the service market in the UK, the biggest piece of that is VRF and splits. We realised that if we wanted to play in that market, we needed to have more of a geographic spread of HVAC engineers as opposed to chiller engineers.”