HRH Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark Awards Prestigious Prize to Melbourne Company

ITW GSE is pleased to announce that RATE Australia Pty Ltd has won a prestigious Business Award initiated by HRH Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark together with the Danish Export Association.

The prize is awarded once a year in the categories: Business Excellence, Green Solutions and Newcomer of The Year. Today, the prize was awarded for the very first time at Amalienborg Castle, The Danish Royal House. RATE Australia won the Green Solutions category that perfectly matches their contribution towards delivering environmentally friendly airport solutions to the Australian market.

For more than 10 years, RATE has represented ITW GSE in Australia. During that period, RATE has delivered and installed ground power units (GPU) and pre-condition air (PCA) units made in Denmark at more than 130 aircraft parking positions in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Darwin and more airports. The GPUs and PCAs supply aircraft with electrical power and fresh air when the aircraft are parked at the airport gate. For information, Sydney airport currently has 41 stands for international and freight operations and 57 stands for domestic and regional operations.

“RATE is always bringing valuable feedback and master innovative thinking thus creating new solutions for the benefit of their customers,” says Poul Elvstroem, vice president sales and marketing at ITW GSE.

“A very good example is the solar project in Darwin airport. The airport has established a 5.5 MW solar facility airside to reduce it’s carbon footprint. When Darwin Airport bought ITW GSE battery GPUs, the intention was to supply aircraft with clean power. But RATE and Darwin airport soon got the very good idea of storing some of the energy from the solar farm in the batteries of the eGPUs. Selling energy to the utility happens at lower rates than buying electricity from the utility. So whatever can be stored and saved for later use is a true win and supports the sustainability thoughts of Darwin airport even better. The solar project is not only innovative. It also serves as inspiration for other airports and for ITW’s world-wide distribution network,” Elvstroem continues.

Further, he points out that the team at RATE is always being energetic, professional and pragmatic in their efforts to exceed customer expectations.

On behalf of Peter Reidy, owner of RATE, who could unfortunately not travel to Denmark, HRH Crown Prince Frederik handed over the award to the Australian Ambassador to Denmark Mary Ellen Miller.

When ITW GSE introduced it’s 7400 battery driven GPU, RATE immediately bought six units and launched a big marketing campaign at the annual Australia Airport Association (AAA) conference. They thereby inspired many major airports to look the battery way instead of installing diesel driven GPUs that are big energy guzzlers.

Future Perspectives

At short sight, ITW GSE could consider the effects of replacing those 34 diesel GPUs that Australian airports purchase per year (2019 numbers) with battery GPUs. The emission savings would be 1,935 tons of CO₂ which correspond to 227 return journeys between Copenhagen and Sydney on Premium Economy.

When considering the full market potential, i.e. around 350 diesel units, the calculations become even more interesting and convincing. The complete savings would amount in 19,600 tons of CO₂ or the same as 2,750 return travels between CPH and SYD.