Business & Money | Saturday 25 April, 2015 8:54 am |

As part of its ongoing initiatives to conserve the earth’s resources while providing the highest-quality service to clients, Ras Al Khaimah Free Trade Zone (RAK FTZ) has opened a state-of-the-art District Cooling Plant to meet its air-conditioning demand. The plant, which uses chilled water to control air temperature and treat ventilated air in RAK FTZ buildings, was designed by RAK FTZ engineers. It enables the free zone’s air conditioning units to use less electricity while producing better air quality and more climate control for clients.

The new, AED 25 million plant is the second District Cooling Plant in Ras Al Khaimah, and the first one in the emirate that was built for a non-commercial use. As an additional benefit to the environment, the plant will recycle the water it discharges to irrigate trees and plants.

“The opening of our new District Cooling Plant underscores RAK FTZ’s commitment to continuously improve the free zone’s infrastructure and find new and better ways to reduce energy and water consumption while making it as easy as possible for our clients to conduct business,” said Eyad Ismail, RAK FTZ’s Engineering Manager. “The new plant will not only reduce carbon emissions and provide better air conditioning for our clients, it can also be enlarged to provide energy-efficient climate control for more RAK FTZ clients in the future as the free zone continues to expand.”

The opening of the plant closely follows the announcement of two awards that RAK FTZ recently won for its environmentally friendly initiatives. For the second year in a row, the free zone won the Environment Protection & Development Authority of Ras Al Khaimah’s award for the best environmental practices in the emirate. The free zone also won the German Emirati Joint Council for Industry and Commerce award for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).