Today the Indian textile industry is not only becoming one of the fastest growing in the world but also increasing focus in taking place in the fields like textile humidification. For any textile mill next to the machinery, humidification considered to be the major investment area. Though this field is dominated by European companies on the one side, there are several Indian companies that have been established in the last decade or so. However, the Coimbatore-based Air Maaster Industrial Technolozies is quite different to others because it was promoted by a technically-sound personality, namely, Mr. S.N. Barathi. In fact he has floated his own venture only after earning a good reputation among the industries for his contribution in the energy saving. Several textile mills in the country have been benefitted a lot due to Mr. Barathi’s excellent energy-audit work done.
A perfect partnership
In an exclusive interview with The Textile Magazine, Mr. Barathi said ever since the company has entered into a marketing agreement with Voltas Ltd., the synergy between the two companies has become more healthier and successful. The Voltas tie-up has also brought a very good brand acceptance for the Air Maaster’s humidification and waste collection systems in the field. Not surprisingly, with Voltas vast network available all over India, Air Maaster is also able to expand its business activities across the country and several installations have been already made different parts of the country.
Mr. Barathi also pointed out recently that Voltas has agreed to offer their complete service and extensive support through their own 180-odd engineers round the clock. This has made many mills to switch over to Air Maaster products from other brands. For example, the company has recently received several new orders including from Lakshmi Mills, Sri Govindaraja Textiles Pvt. Ltd., Siva Ganapathy, Lakshmi Narasimha, Jaishri Shanmuga, Dharmaratna Textiles, Lucky Yarn Tex, etc., etc. Among the various factors which drives the growth of the company, the key factors are the good evaluation done by the technical team in terms of product and energy saving as well as the inhouse production facilities of most of the critical components. The company also provides utmost satisfaction in terms of energy saving upto 40 per cent.
Expansion plan
Riding on the growth of the current scenario, Air Maaster is now embarking for a major expansion plan by adding 5,000 sq. ft. area facilities. The expansion will meet the growing popularity of the company’s products for which it has already orders in hand worth about Rs. 6 crores. For the current financial year, the company is aiming to achieve a major turnover of Rs. 10 crores compared to Rs. 2.5 crores achieved during last year.
Experience speaks
The company has vast experience in energy audits, energy efficiency studies, implementation of energy saving proposals, design & detailing of H-plants, compressed air piping, waste collection system for textile mills. For more than two decades, the company was rendering service to various textile mills in fine tuning their systems to achieve excellent performance with reduced energy consumption.
The rich experience of the company is the key input for development of various products and system design. Air Maaster offers customer specific products and systems instead of standard products and systems. This has helped Air Maaster to execute several projects for many corporate and reputed mills.
Air Maaster Industrial Technolozies perhaps the only company offering a complete range of products with different technolozies, like rotary drum filter, stationery drum filter and multi drum filter, etc. The company is innovative in their approach and has launched several unique products in the past 2, 3 years.
Ø Two of the products developed by Air Maaster has won National Award for the Energy Saving Product of the year 2009 from Confederation of Indian Industries. The Award was presented by Dr. Ajai Mathur, Director, Bureau of Energy Efficiency, Government of India, at a national level function.
Promoter’s people
Promoter Mr. S.N. Barathi is a Honours and post-graduate in engineering from Madras University, with university first rank. Prior to his exposure to energy efficiency field he had 5 years of project and maintenance experience in a very large chemical complex located in South India. He has handled several energy management projects in India and abroad in a wide cross section of industries. He has more than two decades of experience in energy efficiency studies.
Ø He has been selected as a “National Expert” by Government of India for UNDP – GOI Energy Bus Project to conduct energy audits in the identified units in South India (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu).
Ø He has undergone an advanced level fellowship training program in energy conservation in the UK conducted by UNDP during August 1990.
Ø Based on an invitation from Textile Institute, Manchester, he has delivered a speech on energy conservation opportunities in textiles.
Ø He has been a very active steering committee member of the Confederation of Indian Industries to bring out a manual on energy efficiency at design stage funded by Asian Development Bank.
For details, contact: Air Maaster Industrial Technolozies, “Saradha Kripa”, New No.55, Raju Naidu Street, Sivanandha Colony, Coimbatore – 641 012. E-mail: airmaaster@airmaaster.com