SPOTLIGHT
Who is REFCOM?
There has been some differences in of opinion over what exactly REFCOM’s role is in the current landscape. Queries raised vary from ‘Why don’t you prosecute all these unqualified people buying gas and installing split systems?’, to ‘What are you going to do about the likes of Halfords selling R134a?’ Graeme Fox, senior mechanical engineer at BESA, the parent company of REFCOM, is here to clear things up.
T
he issue of car parts wholesalers selling ‘top up’ 500gm bottles of R134a has always been a bug-bear of industry. During the original drafting of the F-Gas Regulations all gas handling was to be included under the scheme, but at the eleventh hour – after intense
lobbying by the car manufacturing sector – the automotive sector was removed from F-Gas and a MAC (Mobile Air Conditioning) Directive was formed instead.
This resulted in a loophole that has clearly angered many in the RACHP sector as they see mechanics and the general public buying gas that RACHP professionals can’t obtain without registering and proving qualifications. As someone who has spent their whole career in the RACHP industry, I understand this can be frustrating.
Luckily this will become less of an issue over time as R134a is phased out from car air conditioning over the next few years. Although REFCOM continues to press DEFRA for tighter rules on gas supply, the small amounts of gas involved won’t be worth the effort from the car spares market so we will find this becomes less and less of a problem by itself.
People do complain frequently about the issue
of car spares distributors selling gas to ‘everyone and anyone’ but is it really that big a problem? I’ve never seen more than two bottles of gas on the shelf of my local outlet – surely their stocks would be bigger if they were supplying large quantities, or the shelves would be empty where they’re flying off?
It is also frustrating when we see internet sales of bottles of gas and split systems seemingly going unchallenged through sites like eBay. Internet sales are the bane of any enforcement body – I’ve had the same conversations with the European Commission and the United Nations Environment Programme that I’ve had with DEFRA or the EA and it’s a hard one to clamp down on.
The crux of the problem, from an EA viewpoint, is that they need to catch someone in the act – and that’s clearly a difficult thing to do. I’ve reported internet sales of splits to them before and they are very good at investigating
18 October 2017
www.acr-news.com
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