Chennai: With the buoyancy in the telecom and manufacturing sector, the city-based industrial fan manufacturers, Nadi Group, is on an expansion mode. It has two joint ventures with different overseas partners to manufacture industrial fans and instrument cooling fans with applications in a wide variety of industries.

Its industrial fans are manufactured by the Rs13.7-crore turnover Nadi Airtechnics Pvt Ltd a 50:50 joint venture between Nadi Group and the US-based Twin City Fan Companies. According to managing director J B Kamdar, the company has been growing at 60 per cent necessitating the expansion. The Indian market for industrial fans is estimated to be around Rs200 crore.

The Rs.3.5-crore expansion will enable the company to fabricate 1,000 tons of steel into industrial fans which is equivalent to Rs30 crore turnover. Kamdar says, "These industrial fans are custom made and differ in sizes. So it will be difficult to quantify the capacity in terms of units." Last year the company fabricated 700 ton of steel.

According to him, Nadi Airtechnics caters to automobile paint shops, nuclear, hydro and thermal power stations, steel, textile, marine ventilation, railways, foundry, defence, pneumatic conveying industries. The customers include Tata Motors, Larsen & Toubro, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, General Motors, Durr India and others.

On the other hand, the small-sized instrument cooling fans (upto 6-inch diameter) used in cooling of circuits in industrial electronics and computers are manufactured by Ebm Nadi International Pvt Ltd, the 51:49 JV with the majority stake-holder German company, ebm Papst, holds 51-per cent and Nadi group 49 per cent.

The Rs4 crore fresh investment enables the company to enter the 8- and 10-inch fan segments incorporating the external rotor motor. "The new facility would double our capacity to 600 fans per day. Export opportunities are also there," said Kamdar. The domestic market size is estimated to be in the region of Rs80 crore.

According to Thomas Borst, managing director, ebm-Papst Mulfingen GmbH & Co.KG, the small fans find use in telecom and IT sectors.