Air-conditioning and commercial refrigeration major, Blue Star has launched a new range of Energy labelled (star-rated) wall mounted split air-conditioners. These air-conditioners will be available in a wide range of 2,3 & 4 Star ratings and in capacities of 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 TR.

Under a new Central Government legislation expected to become operational from October 2008, it will become mandatory to energy label window and split air-conditioners upto and including 3 Ton capacity. Under this law, air-conditioners need to be compulsorily tested at authorized laboratories and their energy efficiency revealed through clearly understandable energy labels, to be fixed on all ACs. 5-star would mean the highest efficiency and 1-star would mean the lowest efficiency. The higher the number of stars, the higher would be the initial price, but there would be dramatic power savings. For example, a 2-star Split AC will cost 10% more than a non-labelled machine, but it will save enough power whereby a customer recovers the higher price in 12 months.

Since Blue Star has been promoting the concept of energy efficiency for many years it has decided to sell only star labelled Split air-conditioners this summer on a voluntary basis even though the law has not come into force.

Historically Blue Star has been focussed on institutional customers. However with the commissioning of its new plant at Himachal Pradesh a couple of years ago, taking advantage of the higher manufacturing capacity the company has been making steady progress in the residential segment also. It has 300 exclusive dealers and another 300 non-exclusive dealers for selling Room air-conditioners. According to Mr T Gouri Sankara Babu, Deputy Managing Director, “over the last 3 years Blue Star’s room AC business has been consistently growing at a CAGR of 50% as against the industry growth of 25% - 30%. We have been able to do this since we have differentiated ourselves from the others through better engineered and more energy efficient air-conditioners sold and serviced through technically competent channel partners. We believe that the energy labelling (star-rating) of room air-conditioners will clearly strengthen Blue Star’s position in the room air-conditioner market”.