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— Samson Suresh, General Manger of Rockwool India & Middle East Group
Denmark-headquartered Rockwool International A/s, is the world's
largest producer of stone wool with 27 manufacturing locations across
the globe. Rockwool products offer the most appropriate insulation
solutions to end-users in the petrochemical, energy, ship building and
processing industry. In this interaction, Samson Suresh tells us more
on Rockwool's new manufacturing plant in India and how Rockwool
insulation can help coal-fired power plants significantly reduce carbon
emissions. An interaction by Venugopal Pillai.
To start with, tell us in brief
about the new insulation
material that Rockwool has
developed for coal-fired power
plants.
Rockwool International maintains a
global standard for all the products it
manufactures in all of its factories in 27
locations across the globe. Some of the
distinguished and unrivalled Rockwool
products properties are; very low
thermal conductivity, water
impermeability, low shot contents, low
chloride contents and bio-solubility.
Rockwool products are EUCEB
certified which also confirms the high
standards of the wool chemistry. The
superior product performance brings
enormous savings to our customer
through the high energy-efficiency in
the process and also material savings
with lower densities and thickness in
comparison to other available products.
These high quality products produced
at our Dahej plant in Gujarat assures
the coal-fired power plants lower input
costs, i.e. coal consumption.
With India today having over
92,000 mw of coal-fired
power generation capacity,
accounting for more than half of
the total, how do you see prospects
for the new insulation material?
India has huge dependence on the
coal-fired power plants and there are
going to be many additions in capacities
sooner to meet the present and future
demands. While the upcoming plants
have a great opportunity to be more
energy efficient by using our high
performance insulation products and
solutions, the existing plants also have
a clear opportunity to increase their
efficiency and prove enforcement of
BEE's PAT (Perform, Achieve and Trade)
scheme.
We understand that the
product was launched around
a year ago. How has been the
market response thus far?
The technical fraternity of Indian
power plants in India has shown great
interest in initiating the specifications
change. We have seen many successes
in the private sectors so far. But we seek
to see the major change in the
government sector which will impact
the overall power plant efficiency
scenario in the country. With changes
in the specifications achieved, the
regulatory authorities will also have to
enforce implementation of the plans.
To get an order of magnitude,
can you quantify the savings
that could accrue to India if its coalfired
plants were equipped with
Rockwool insulation?
As mentioned and assured by us,
depending on the plant and the raw
material for energy used, we could
bring 20 to 40 per cent of savings in the
input energy costs of the coal fired
power plants.
What steps is Roxul-Rockwool
India of the Rockwool
International Group taking to
market the product in India?
We follow the Rockwool
International's standard approach to
market our products globally; we sell
solutions to our end-use customers.
Rockwool doesn't sell the products by
specifications alone, rather our
technical-sales team works with our
key customers on a case to case basis
providing them technical offerings for
every individual case and showing to
them the cost that could be saved and
the performance that could be
improved.
How was the response to the
recent Rockwool-NTPC
conference?
With our participation in the recent
Power Plant Summit by NTPC, we
have initiated Energy Efficiency
improvement projects with some of
key stakeholders in the industry and
we are very hopeful of proving the
impact to the market.
What has been the market
response to the product
globally?
The products have been used very widely across the globe and have got
such a high reputation on performance
that we are now specified by
engineering and consulting firms for
many new projects. Also the
performance of rockwool products and
the continued commitment to the
industry for more than 75 years in
providing superior products and services
has kept us to hold more than 50 per cent
of the global Stonewool market share.
Apart from power generation,
steam is also generated for other
industrial applications.
Rockwool is used in all high temperature
application areas. Our maximum
service temperature is about 850ºC and
wherever you have high temperatures,
you have a scope for rockwool.
How do you gauge prospects for
Rockwool insulations in India?
We see only one way; to go up in sales
and strengthen our leadership position
in the market!
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