Berner International, New Castle, Pennsylvania, the leading U.S. manufacturer and innovator of air curtains, announced manufacturer representatives SRS Enterprises, Middletown, New Jersey, and S & J Equipment Co., Westfield, Indiana, received the company's "Rep of the Year – 2018" in the buy/resell and commission reps categories, respectively. The awards were presented at the 2019 AHR Expo on Jan. 13 in Atlanta.

Berner International also honored four other manufacturer's representative firms for outstanding 2018 sales achievements: 

·       Silver Award Buy/Resell Rep –– Buck Nye, principal, H.C. Nye, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania;

·       Silver Award Commission Reps –– Rob Williamson, principal, R. Williamson & Associates, Skokie, Illinois; 

·       Bronze Award Buy/Resell –– Bill Myles, principal, Square M Systems, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada;

·       Bronze Award Commission Reps –– Van Sintchak, principal, and Ken Sintchak, principal, Nor-Cal Reps, Walnut Creek, California

S & J, which covers central Indiana and eastern Illinois territories, is one of Berner’s oldest rep relationships and celebrates 50 years in 2019, according to Steve Smith, principal. One large project was the warehouse of a large used car dealer where S & J sold dozens of Berner IDC-12 air curtains for the company’s car storage building. Another industrial application was direct-fired gas heated air curtains for a local auto manufacturing plant’s automobile access doorways.  

“S & J always ranks among our top five reps and last year they had a phenomenal 50-percent increase over 2017,” said Berner's National Sales Manager Michael Coscarelli. “They are our only HVAC rep that sells air curtains exclusively, therefore engineers in their territory think of S & J, Berner and air curtains synonymously. They also have tremendous relationships with packaged HVAC system manufacturer reps that provide total HVAC solutions to industrial and commercial buildings.”   

SRS Enterprises, which has won the top award five years in a row, designed a heated air curtain solution for John F. Kennedy Airport, New York, that eliminated plumbing pipe freezing and promoted warmer indoor air comfort for a major entryway. The air curtains saved the city hundreds of thousands of dollars versus potential entry construction renovation costs, according to Charles Cino, sales rep, SRS Enterprises. The rep’s design team also innovated an unconventional, but effective, vertical installation of the four air curtains to solve over door access challenges. Another high profile project, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, received several air curtains with hot water coils on loading dock doors to minimize winter air infiltration and improve energy efficiency.   

“SRS’ success is intentional with strong leadership and a fantastic troup of employees dedicated to serving the New York market with HVAC solutions,”  said Stephen Benes, a Berner sales manager. “The applications they specify and supply Berner air curtains for are very diversified and range anywhere from small pizza shops to international airports in size.”