THE IT COOLING SPECIALISTS The air conditioning systems made by the German company Stulz are used throughout the world in data centres, mobile phone stations and factories to keep sensitive data and industrial machines cool. Victoria Hattersley talks to Kurt Ploetner, the company’s global sales and marketing director, to find out how it maintains its strong global position.
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tulz, established in 1947, has been involved in the business of air conditioning and cooling systems since 1965. Since then, aside from its main production facilities in Germany, the company has expanded on a global scale with the setting up of production sites in the USA, Italy, India and China. These facilities have various production programmes but they share one thing in common: a focus on cooling systems for IT and telecommunications systems. Mr Ploetner explains this focus on the IT and telecoms industries: “Our core products are mainly for the IT industry. We have seen that the IT markets are the most rapidly growing so we are working to keep up with demand – to which end we are currently expanding our production facilities in China, India and Italy. “The IT and telecoms market changes very rapidly and with all these new drivers such as ipads and iphones the amount of new data which is being sent, received and stored by fibreoptics is growing very quickly, meaning that the demand for new data centres is also increasing. Whatever we do on an iPad or iPhone has to be sent over a telecommunication line and all that data
requires a data centre – all of which require cooling. In fact, in data centres the cooling systems are the biggest power user apart from the data processing itself.”
Cooling and air conditioning The company’s systems for air conditioning in the IT sector vary in size from its CyberAir 2 for large computer and equipment rooms down to its MiniSpace compact system for cooling small server rooms. For the telecoms sector, its products include the SplitAir range for base stations, and the Tel-Air 2 line for internal mounting at base stations. But whilst Stulz’s products are mainly targeted towards IT and telecoms, it also manufactures cooling and air conditioning systems for a number of other end uses. For example, it provides systems for production machinery in various industries, such as tool-making or laser machines which need cooling to precise temperatures. In terms of new products, the company is currently launching an updated version 3 of its CyberAir precision air–conditioning system
that is able to reduce power consumption by 10–15 per cent compared to the previous version of the series – saving costs for the customer as well as reducing CO2 emissions. As Mr Ploetner says, “Our product development focus for the future will be on reducing the total cost of ownership are we are also looking at new refrigerants which are less environmentally damaging.” Stulz’s products can be customised to meet clients’ needs if this is commercially viable. “The service we offer is important because sometimes our customers need their plants to be running 99.999 per cent of the time – which means the machine should not stop any longer than 53 minutes per year. We have specific solutions which we make for certain larger customers, be they telecoms companies such as Orange and Vodafone, or commercial customers.”
Global ambitions Whilst Stulz’s actual production activities are confined to the five countries mentioned above, it has a presence in around 115 countries today with its own sales and service companies or indirectly with what Mr Ploetner refers to as ‘sales and service partners’.
