Cooling products maker Blue Star has doubled its production capacity of deep freezers as the company looks to tap the rising demand in the commercial refrigeration business.
The company has augmented its manufacturing facility at Wada, Maharashtra with a capital expenditure of around Rs 130 crore.
Now, it has the capacity to produce around 2 lakh deep freezers and 1 lakh storage water coolers per annum.
According to Blue Star Managing Director B Thiagarajan, adoption of refrigeration in India is garnering significant thrust, and is expected to increase on the back of rising consumption of perishables in general, and food and medicines, in particular.
"This is further expected to increase the demand for refrigeration products, which combined with the Aatmanirbhar Bharat push, will unfold enormous opportunities for Blue Star.
"We are very well poised to tap these, on the backdrop of our rich pedigree, deep domain knowledge, and best-in-class ranges of products and solutions, suitable for customers across the entire cold value chain," he said.
The entire commercial refrigeration market is close to Rs 5,000 crore in India and deep freezers account for close to 35 per cent of the segment, Blue Star Vice President of Commercial Refrigeration Business M Srinivas Reddy said.
"We hold around 29 per cent market share in deep freezers but in the commercial refrigeration, we hold around 34 per cent markets," he said.
The company is investing in Research & Development to cater to the new market opportunities with the expansion of product portfolio in the segment.
"We are also expanding our portfolio in some other customer segment which we serve, such as kitchen, medical and cold strorages. We are launching many new products going forward," Reddy said.
Blue Star's range of commercial refrigeration products and solutions are sold through a specialised channel network, trained to understand customer needs, and capable of installation and after-sales service.
Currently, Blue Star has around 1,500 trained channel partners for commercial refrigeration across the country.
