Creamer and Fox vie for Institute of Refrigeration presidency

UK: Two well known industry figures – Graeme Fox, current head of REFCOM and Mike Creamer of Business Edge – will compete to be the next president of the IoR.

Graeme Fox and Mike Creamer have both been nominated by the IoR board for election to the position of president-elect. They will be joined in the election process by any other nominations received from amongst the IoR’s members, which must be submitted by September 6.

Thirteen possible candidates are said to have been considered by the IoR’s nominating committee prior to arriving at their selection.

The successful president-elect will support current IoR president Kevin Glass in his role as chairman of the IoR board of trustees until he stands down in November 2020.  

A former air conditioning and refrigeration contractor, Graeme Fox was elected to the IoR board of trustees last year. He has spent more than 15 years representing BESA at AREA – the European RAC contractors’ association – including four years as president from 2010 to 2014. Fox is also currently acting as the EU partner developing global minimum competency criteria for RACHP technicians in Article 5 countries on a UNEP project titled the Refrigerant Drivers’ Licence, and has been involved in developing training materials for delivery across Article 5 nations.

Mike Creamer is founder and MD of Hampshire-based Business Edge Ltd, a company formed in 1990, which provides technical consultancy, air conditioning/refrigeration training and certification. He is well-known for his Masterclass-Air Conditioning Technology Series of technical articles and has overseen thousands of engineers being trained and certified through his company. His varied career includes work as toolmaker, design draughtsman and mechanical design engineer, chief applications engineer, marketing manager, sales director, compressor quality director and managing director.

Board of trustees

Meanwhile, three nominations have been received for the two vacancies on the board of trustees. When voting opens in October, IoR members will be able to choose between Lisa-Jayne Cook, a sales and applications engineer at J&E Hall who was recently named in the Top 50 Women in Engineering list; Juliet Loiselle, publisher of the trade magazine ACR Journal; and Damian Wiszniewski, business development manager at Samsung Climate Solutions UK. 

Online voting for all the positions will open on October 1, with the results being announced at the IoR AGM on November 6.

Details of all the nominees can be viewed here.