IN THE HOT SEAT
Thermofrost Cryo marks 25 Years with LG
Thermofrost Cryo recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of its partnership
with LG. In this exclusive interview, joint managing director Steve Mace sits down with ACR News to refl ect on the company’s remarkable journey, the dynamics of collaboration with LG, and the exciting roadmap ahead.
confi dent, you might decide to hold off on buying something, wait a month, and see if things improve. That said, it’s not disastrous. Trump seems to
have rowed back somewhat, and we’ve had a solid start to this Financial Year.
How has business been generally
over the last few months? The conditions out there haven’t been particularly great. I think there are a few factors at play. Personally, I don’t believe the new government did us any favours by coming into offi ce and talking about the tough budget they would have to implement months in advance. They essentially said, ‘Look at the mess we’ve inherited, we’ll need to tighten belts and increase tax receipts’, even though they claimed they wouldn’t raise VAT, income tax, or personal NI. That had the eff ect of lowering business confi dence and restricting spending. The upshot was a couple of poor months – business just dropped off . It seemed like everyone decided to hold back on spending, waiting to assess the budget’s impact, even though its eff ects wouldn’t be felt until October. That had a signifi cant impact on business. Whilst I believed things would recover eventually, the overall climate wasn’t buoyant. I don’t think President Trump’s actions have helped. Take the tariff s, for instance – they may not be directly aff ecting us right now, but they are indirectly. So much of business is tied to confi dence, and when it’s low, people hesitate. It’s similar to our personal experiences – if you’re not feeling
18 July 2025 •
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Against this landscape, how has business been for Thermofrost Cryo? There’s been a signifi cant shift over the last fi ve to ten years. Many companies of our size have been absorbed into corporate groups. We’re now one of the few remaining sizeable, independent companies in the sector – certainly not the only one, but it’s becoming increasingly rare. The last 15 to 20 years have brought about enormous changes in the availability of refrigeration and air conditioning equipment and accessories, with an increasing number of outlets. It’s far greater now than it was years ago, which makes it much harder to compete. But we are competing – we’re still here and off ering something unique to the market. Air conditioning only accounts for 15 to 20% of our turnover. The balance comes from our refrigeration side, in the form of electronic controls, as well as commercial and industrial applications. We’re strong in these sectors, and I believe we
excel in certain areas, such as our eff ective technical support. We have a dedicated technical team, with product managers and technical specialists who support customers over the phone, an area where we excel.
Over the last two or three years, the biggest challenge has been recovering from Covid-19, which I imagine has been the case for most businesses. For us, it was obviously a tough time, but we were fortunate to have systems in place that allowed us to adapt quickly to working from home. Our phone systems, for example, enabled staff to simply unplug their offi ce phones, take them home, plug them into their routers, and continue working seamlessly. We worked hard to manage the transition, and it went surprisingly well. In fact, some team members who
were initially hesitant about working from home ended up preferring it. It was ironic to hear from a few of them, a year or so in, saying they didn’t want to return to the offi ce after all. Now, most of our offi ce staff split their time, working three days from home and two days in the offi ce, though this varies depending on location. In our Manchester offi ce, for example, everyone works full-time on-site because it’s a smaller team. Departments like accounts, technical support, sales, and order processing operate on the hybrid model, which works fairly well for now, as we have a very stable and experienced workforce. I’m not sure how sustainable the current
arrangement will be in the long run. As we look to the future, particularly when it comes to training and onboarding new staff , we may need to reassess our approach.
How has your relationship with LG evolved? We started in 2000, but I joined Thermofrost back in 1998 – 27 years ago now. At that time, Thermofrost had already been running for about 25 years but had very little involvement in air conditioning. There was a product off ering, but it was really just a single page in the price list with an OEM product sourced from France. I joined the company initially as a self- employed consultant to explore the possibility of Thermofrost entering the air conditioning market. This was after I had left HRP, and I spent two or three days a week on the project, balancing it with other industry work. When Thermofrost decided it wanted to move into the air conditioning market, it off ered me a choice: join the company full-time or continue working independently. I joined as Air Conditioning Product Manager in 1998. We started as a Carrier distributor, but in 2000, Carrier’s distribution strategy changed with the acquisition of the Toshiba brand. They decided not to renew our distribution agreement, likely because they already had an established base of Toshiba air conditioning
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