The recent Cape Town workshop was the first of its kind, exceeding expectations with stakeholders from all over the country gathering to discuss opportunities.

The first-ever Cooling as a Service (CaaS) workshop in Cape Town, South Africa, was a great success, drawing local providers, end users and funders of HVAC&R technology to discuss the opportunities and challenges with this game-changing servitisation business model. To accelerate the uptake of this model, the BASE team headed to Cape Town on March 9 to help relevant South African stakeholders learn more about CaaS and how to implement it.

The audience identified that CaaS offers important opportunities for providers, clients and investors alike. The attendees concluded that for providers, CaaS unlocks the deployment of technology of which the upfront cost could otherwise be prohibitive, locks in revenue streams from maintenance, and enables the leverage of Internet of Things (IoT). For investors, CaaS offers the opportunity to deploy green funding. For clients, the model enables the implementation of a more expensive and better performing system and simplifies compliance with indoor air quality related requirements.

Some key challenges were also raised by the discussion groups. Building trust between providers and clients was pointed out as the backbone of the success of the model. For clients to enter into such long-term commitments in South Africa, the reliability of contractors will be key. Sometimes customers might be reluctant to give away control of their cooling systems, especially when the value of potential product loss in case of cooling disruption is large. More generally, this requires a shift in mindset. The need to reach consensus on a unit of charge was raised by potential service buyers present in the room, as well as the need to make the service highly customer centric.

Read more at the official CaaS press release.