— 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!