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Air-conditioning and refrigeration major Blue Star Ltd is planning to nearly treble its installed annual capacity for room air conditioners in the next two years. It currently stands at three lakh units per annum.
For this, it is setting up a new plant, its eighth in the country that will have an added capacity to make around half-a-million air conditioners, in addition to freezers and components for backward integration.
“By 2018, we expect nearly half of our air conditioning and refrigeration business to come from room air-conditioners,” B Thiagarajan, Executive Director and President, AC&R Products Business, said. The current share stands at around 33 per cent.
Blue Star will invest approximately Rs 150 crore in the new plant, and the location near a port in the southern part of India will be firmed up by October. The new plant is scheduled to go on stream in two years.
Thiagarajan said that the new factory will enable raising the level of localisation from 50-60 per cent currently to 75 per cent.
The company, which entered the residential room air conditioner segment in 2011, has seen this segment now contributing to 70 per cent of overall room AC sales. Also, over half of these sales currently come from the non-tier-I towns and cities.
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