Camfil Is More Than Just Clean Air
Camfil fulfills its promise of products that are designed for sustainability, health and lowest possible operational cost
At Camfil, the idea of air filtration goes beyond just producing clean air. The goal is to improve the environments where so many people spend most of their time; to protect the health of the countless people around the world who would otherwise spend their days working and breathing polluted air.
Anders Sundvik, Vice President of Research and Development at Camfil, states, “Our business is all about energy efficiency, safety and health. We believe that the right to breathe clean air is a basic human right. Air filtration is not just about producing clean air as it is about protecting people’s health.”
Based in Trosa, a small village in Sweden, Camfil began more than 50 years ago as a family-owned company, and continues to run as one today. Since our beginnings in the 1960s, the company has grown into a global leader in the air filtration market, employing more than 3,700 people at 26 production plants throughout Europe, North America and East Asia. Camfil maintains a presence in over 50 countries around the world, with annual sales of around 700 million dollars.
A Big Small Company
When looking at the size of other companies working on a global scale, Camfil looks small in comparison, but the company has few competitors working on the same level. Camfil has proven itself as a leader in all of the major segments of the air filtrations market, from products designed for individual consumers and small offices to industrial solutions that will handle everything from heavy dust and gas pollution to sterilization equipment used by microbiology laboratories.
Showing that Camfil understands the market and their customers, Mr. Sundvik explains, “The air filter market is very local. It’s built on personal relationships. When you buy air filters for your building, you go to the closest vendor, who often happens to be a small local ‘garage’ entrepreneur in your neighborhood. So we make every possible effort to act local but stay global wherever we operate.”
When asked about what makes Camfil stand out from so many local vendors, Sundvik adds, “Our competitive edge is being at the forefront of technological innovation in the industry. Selling high-quality air filters is tough. Clean air is an invisible product. No one would be able to tell how polluted the air we are breathing actually is without measuring and monitoring it. We help our customers visualize clean air.”
Technology and Innovation
To help its customers visualize the air they breathe, Camfil has built mobile laboratories for monitoring and measuring the levels of dust particles and concentrations of gases and contaminants in the air on customer sites.
In 2012, the group added a state-of-the-art R&D campus, the Tech Center, to its Trosa manufacturing base. The 2,500 square meter Tech Center is one of the largest research and development centers in the world for the development of air filters, clean air solutions and filter production technology. The facility employs 35 specialists and is equipped with the latest laboratory technology to analyze air and develop high-performance filtration products and systems.
All of this has been put into place to help Camfil fulfill its promise of products that are designed for sustainability, health and lowest possible operational cost.
Unprecedented Energy Efficiency
Filtering and cooling the air in commercial spaces requires a lot more energy than you might think you’d need to simply push air around. To give you an idea, an average residential air filtration system will consume as much electricity as a domestic refrigerator/freezer. If you need to increase the filtration rate, it’s about the same, in energy costs, as adding another refrigerator to your home.
Expanding on Camfil’s intention to increase the energy efficiency of their products, Mr. Sundvik had this to say, “The current level of air filter performance is a compromise between efficiency and energy consumption. Our future goal is to increase efficiency while keeping energy consumption at lower levels. If we manage to reduce the energy consumption of our filter by just one percent, the aggregate effect of energy savings for our customers would total approximately 150 Gigawatt/Hours per year.
While that 1% reduction in energy consumption already makes for impressive numbers, it is nowhere near the company’s actual goal of a 20% cut in the energy consumed by our products. When this goal is reached, the resulting savings for the economy as a whole would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Looking to The Future
As an industry leader today, Camfil is focused on creating a better future. The products we produce today are delivering unmatched results, in terms of both filtration and energy efficiency, but there is still much work to be done. Our experience and reputation for innovation will carry us into the future, where we will continue to lead the way. We are hard at work, developing new technologies and systems that will not only allow us to keep our promises of sustainability, a healthy environment, and lower energy consumption, but improve upon them as time goes on.
Lynne Laake
Camfil USA Air Filters
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