The Institute of Refrigeration (IOR) held its 114th Annual Dinner on 20 February at the Grange Hotel in London.
Support for the event, which celebrates the Institute's anniversary, has increased in recent years, led by a dedicated working group drawn from member and companies from across the sector, chaired by IOR Fellow, Paul Arrowsmith.

In his speech, IOR president Graeme Maidment highlighted the fact that the work of the IOR is driven by its members and thanked them for their efforts through the various committees and working groups. He said: 'This is your Institute and it is important that it is led by members. Last year saw record new committee members and I really want this to continue.'

He also spoke about the challenge of recruiting young people to the engineering sector: 'After many years of under recruiting in engineering we have an under capacity and as a nation are predicted to need more than one million engineers by 2020. Our industry is getting older and it is critical if we are to meet our future challenges that we bring in new blood.'

He continued: 'The challenge is for us as an industry to convince young people that we are more interesting than telecoms or aerospace engineering, rather than the current perceptions that it is only marginally more exciting than politics or railways!'

A number of presentations were also made for outstanding individual achievement. The Lightfoot medal for the best evening paper was presented to Dr Andy Pearson for his paper entitled HFO R1234ze for variable speed centrifugal chillers.

The Ted Perry Award for research of a practical nature related to the field of refrigeration by a young person went to Goran Micic, who successfully researched and developed a working prototype, including most of the construction of the unit, for a freezer operating at -150°C as a replacement for nitrogen cooling technologies in medical laboratories.

An award was also presented to John Webb of J&E Hall by the IOR's Service Engineers Section in recognition of lifetime achievements in refrigeration.

The final award of the evening, the J&E Hall Gold Medal for innovation, went to Prof Ruzhu Wang of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Prof Wang's work provides a method of using solar heating to drive adsorption - thus propelling the feasibility of solar powered cooling for the future. Mark Roberts of J&E Hall presented the cheque for £5,000 and the Gold Medal to Prof Wang.

The after dinner speaker was the Rt Hon Michael Portillo, who amused guests with his anecdotes and humour. In addition, a raffle raised £714 for the Wallace and Gromit Chidren's Charity and £714 for the Presidents' Fund which will go towards the relaunch of the IOR schools website Fantastic Fridges.

The next IOR dinner is already booked for the Grange Hotel on 19 February 2015. This year's event was a sell out and demand for tickets is expected to be high again.