RAC magazine to appear within H&V News

UK: RAC magazine, the UK’s longest established air conditioning and refrigeration magazine, is to be amalgamated within its sister publication H&V News.

RAC will now become what is described as a “magazine within a magazine” inside Heating & Ventilating News (H&V News) from April 21. At the same time H&V News, currently a fortnightly magazine, will become monthly. The combined magazine will have a print circulation of 11,000 readers.

RAC editor Andrew Gaved becomes editor-in-chief across both titles. The respective magazines’ websites and events, which includes the H&V News Awards and RAC’s annual Cooling Awards and Question Time events, will remain as separate entities.

The amalgamation decision signals a reprieve for the print versions of both magazines. In October, publisher EMAP announced that print magazine production across its 17 titles would cease within a year to 18 months, with the company becoming a “digital and events” business.

Opportunities for cooperation

Announcing the magazine’s amalgamation, Andrew Gaved maintained that RAC would have its own cover within H&V News. “The changes offer some great opportunities for cooperation and it marks a positive step for both brands. And I am excited about it,” he told the Cooling Post.

Probably the oldest refrigeration trade magazine in the world, RAC can trace its history back through many name changes to its first issue in 1898 as Cold Storage and Ice Trades Review. It beat off many competitors over its 100+ year history, and was the sole magazine in the market for a period of nearly 20 years until ACR News was launched in the mid-1980s. Despite this, and the later launch of ACR Today (now ACR Journal), RAC retained its market-leading position for a number years, but more recently it has slipped behind the other two magazines in terms of both circulation and advertising content.

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