Aqua Cooling Solutions is celebrating winning the Queen’s Award for Enterprise – the UK’s highest accolade for business success. The award was granted for Innovation in recognition of one of Aqua's data centre products, the UK-manufactured Leak Prevention System (LPS).
The principal use of the Aqua LPS is to enable computer data centres and server rooms to benefit from water-cooled data cabinets with guaranteed leak-free operation. At its heart is the innovative use of a simple scientific principle – not used before commercially in the computer data room sector.
The ability to utilise water as cooling, with leak-free guarantee, brings so many benefits to the market place. It allows a highly efficient alternative to traditional data centre air cooling methods, giving clients substantially lower energy costs and minimising their environmental footprint, in some cases by as much as 95%. In addition, as servers become increasing sophisticated, traditional air conditioning cooling methods will become ineffective, increasing the need further still for water cooled options.
Sales Director, Simon Davis, who designed the LPS concept for Aqua Cooling explains; “Our LPS system has propelled us into the data centre industry and enabled us to grow and develop our business within this market sector, both at home and overseas. In 2011/12 the data centre industry became 33% of our annual turnover – it was previously 0%. In addition, our LPS has opened up new geographical markets to the business, indeed our entire export market – we now manufacture and export from the UK to the Middle East, Africa and USA, with considerable potential to come."
“In the last twelve months, employee numbers have risen from 30 to 43 and Aqua’s medium-term order book is healthy — we currently have potential US orders worth more than £20 million in the pipeline, as well as strong interest from one of China’s biggest companies. Receiving a Queen’s Award for Enterprise is such an honour, not just for me personally, but for the company as a whole. The Award recognises the contribution made by all of our employees on a daily basis to put Aqua on the map as a global market leader in the data centre field.”
Established in 2001, Aqua’s main office is in Fareham, with a satellite office in York and a sister company, QCooling, based in Dallas in the USA. Approximately 140 Queen’s Awards have been announced this year for outstanding business achievement in the fields of International Trade, Innovation and Sustainable Development. The awards are made annually by HM The Queen, and are only given for the highest levels of excellence demonstrated in each category.
