Welcome the Green Shoots

It was a pleasure to attend Thermo King’s celebrations last week A tour of the plant was followed by a mini-expo featuring energy efficient products and services from the facility and other local companies. The award winning Thermo King Galway site, at the leading edge of environmentally friendly design and manufacture of transport refrigeration equipment, has been part of the Galway business community since 1976.
As part of the Galway celebration, Transitions Optical was presented with the Trane Energy Efficiency Leader Award in honor of its demonstrated commitment to energy efficiency and environmental responsibility. The plant in Tuam recently completed upgrades to its buildings that are generating €144,000 in annual energy savings and reduced the energy required to produce each lens by 50 percent.
The new Center for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability at Ingersoll Rand (CEES) was also announced by the company. Thermo King are former winners of the Galway Chamber Business Awards Environmental Category in 2005 and 2009.
Tim Folan, Environmental Officer at the Mervue Plant does incredible work with his team and the buy in to the environmental programme at the plant is palpable. Also very good news for Thermo King is that the 450 workers in Mervue are back to a five day week having been working a three day week since January 2009.
These good signs, now universally known as ‘green shoots’ have made a welcome appearance in Galway recently. It’s great to hear that Cisco have now increased their workforce to 140 employees while Avaya have advertised in the local press for 73 people. This is all positive and we welcome it. We also welcome next weekend’s International Association of Language Centres (IALC) Conference and Workshop which, as the biggest EFL conference to be held in Ireland, will bring 200 visitors to Galway and will generate over €400,000 for the local economy. We wish Celestine Rowland and David Niland of the Galway Cultural Institute and the Galway Business School every success with the event. Our conference business not only creates revenue for Galway but it showcases our city both nationally and internationally.
More good stories…Galway Chamber is pleased to partner with the recently launched Galway’s Best Awards. Central Park Group, in association with Heineken, has launched Galway’s Best Awards 2010 in a quest to find and recognise customer service excellence in the service industry in Galway City and County.
The initiative is supported by Fáilte Ireland and the Galway Chamber. The awards have developed from the very simple concept of recognising and celebrating the hard work put in on a daily basis in the service sector, by Galway businesses and their staff. Categories in the awards include best Hotel, Café, Restaurant, Pub, Fashion Retailer and Festival / Event. Businesses that fall under any of the named categories are invited to log onto www.GalwaysBestAwards.com and enter their business; which then will be put to a public vote over the summer period in order to find the ‘best’ in each group.
The closing date for entries is Monday 24th May at 5pm. To enter your business or for more information, log onto www.GalwaysBestAwards.com.