Beams winning battle for Waterloo

However, according to Waterloo Air Products, the UK division of UK and Netherlands-based designer, engineer, and manufacturer of ventilation components, the Waterloo Group, interest in chilled beam systems, particularly, is increasing year-on-year. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie visited the company’s Aylesford site, near Maidstone in Kent, to find out why from the Group’s chairman, Rick Edmondson.

 Waterloo Group, a 200-strong company with manufacturing and office facilities at both Aylesford in Kent and at Holten in eastern Holland, designs, engineers, manufactures, and sells, ventilation products including grilles, diffusers, chilled beams, louvres, variable air volume (VAV) dampers, and displacement units, worldwide – via an extensive network of sales teams, agents, and local manufacturing licensees. Such is the business’s expertise and reputation, Rick Edmondson told me proudly when I visited its Aylesford site, that the UK division, Waterloo Air Products, can now count among its customers 17 of the 20 top mechanical and electrical contractors operating in its home market. Broadly-speaking, he explained, the UK operation serves customers in countries ‘where British design philosophies and standards apply’, with the Dutch division serving customers mainly in mainland Europe, tailoring the service to accommodate these countries’ (as Rick Edmondson put it) ‘different approaches to ventilation’. Market sector-wise, commercial installations, such as office and residential, make up around two-thirds of Waterloo’s turnover, while of the remaining third, the Group ‘generates good business’ supplying ventilation systems into healthcare facilities in many countries – a sector within which it is keen to increase sales. It also supplies ventilation components for specialised OEM applications – for example for aeroplane and railway carriages.

Precision and care