ABB claims that it has become the UK’s largest supplier of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) drives, eight years after it decided to tackle the market directly rather than selling through a specialised HVAC distributor as it had been doing before.

In 2002, ABB set itself a target of capturing 20% of the market by 2007 – a figure it says it surpassed by 2006. The company believes that last year it had a 26% share of the market, making it the UK’s largest supplier of HVAC drives. It adds that this growth has been achieved mainly at the expense of other suppliers.

“The growth has come from supply-and-install packages to existing properties, as well as product sales to HVAC OEMs who, for the first time, can benefit from purchasing their AC drives directly from ABB,” says Steve Ruddell, manager of the company’s discrete automation and motion division in the UK (above). “We are recording 15% growth year-on-year.”

The company now has a HVAC team of 22 drives service support engineers and access to five application engineers with expertise in pump, fan, chiller and compressor applications.

ABB is forecasting continuing growth, partly as a result of greater awareness of energy-saving issues, spurred on by the Government’s CRC energy efficiency scheme. Later this year, it plans to launch a new HVAC drive based on the current platform but with some significant enhancements.