Rick Jones, Technical Services manager for Imperial Brown, Inc., met with multiple United States senators in Washington, D.C., to advocate for policies that will encourage manufacturing growth in the walk-in cooler and freezer industry.

Jones was in Washington, D.C., attending the 2016 Public Policy Symposium of the Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute (AHRI), the primary trade group of the industry.

Imperial Brown, Inc., with manufacturing facilities in Salisbury and Portland, Ore., is one of the leading walk-in cooler/freezer manufacturers in North America.

Jones met with legislative teams from the offices of Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who recently toured Imperial Brown’s Salisbury facility; Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. In addition, Rick Jones had the opportunity to have private discussions with Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

During the meetings, Jones advocated for policies that will encourage manufacturing growth and not unnecessarily burden the walk-in cooler and freezer industry.

“The primary concern for our company is the increasing regulation of our industry, the fact that agencies are proposing and implementing new rules that are not coordinated between agencies and the cumulative effect of new regulations that would be burdensome and increase costs for the end users and operators,” Jones said.

Over the past several years, Imperial Brown, Inc. and AHRI have lobbied the Department of Energy (DOC) to drop two new walk-in cooler/freezer test procedures that would have cost Imperial Brown more than $1 million to implement, and lobbied the EPA to extend timelines for implementing the delisting of multiple refrigerants. This extension was approved, Jones said.

Jones said that ARHI has worked for the past year to get language into Senate Bill 2012 to make it law that agencies work with the industry prior to initiating new rules, review existing industry rules and analyze the cumulative effect of changes on the industry.

“This is something we really want to see happen,” he said.

AHRI is asking that Congress:

• Keep current rules in place until the DOE convenes stakeholders to revise the rule-making process to take into account progress made and the economic and technology justification for future rulemakings.
• Require DOE to follow its own process rule when developing efficiency standards.
• Require agencies to follow Executive Order 13563 to minimize the cumulative effects of regulations.

Another primary goal of the symposium was to make sure that Congress understands first-hand the role the industry plays in creating and sustaining good-paying jobs in communities.

“Our relationship with AHRI continues to help us as a company have a coordinated voice on policy matters, not only here in the United States, but also through the coordination of work that they are doing in Canada,” Jones said.

The Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, formed in 2008 by a merger of the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute and the Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association, is a North American trade association of manufacturers of air conditioning, heating and commercial refrigeration equipment. The organization performs political advocacy on behalf of its member industries, maintains technical standards, certifies products, shares data, conducts research and awards scholarships. Its 300 plus members represent more than 90 percent of the companies in the U.S. involved in commercial and residential heating and cooling.

Imperial Brown, Inc. is a leader in temperature management facilities for food service, biotechnology, medical and building construction industries. It manufactures walk-in coolers and freezers for restaurants and commercial kitchens, cold storage components for processing plants, ice makers for dam construction, wide- range testing chambers, pharmaceutical development and manufacturing, high humidity and dry chambers, robotic enclosures and archival storage chambers for some of the most valuable and fragile documents in human history.