Dantherm AS

Dantherm’s breath of fresh air

Today, no issue is more important than air pollution, and the resultant effects on the environments in which we live.

Air management systems, particularly those for urban and industrial use are becoming increasingly vital to provide a manageable environment for us to live and work. Dantherm AS is the parent company of a number businesses, carrying out development, production, sale and installation of industrial air management solutions, with the ongoing vision to ‘make clean air for people’.

Originally established in 1958 by E.R Olsen, Dantherm expanded rapidly, forming sales organisations in the Scandinavian countries, Germany, France and the UK during the 1960s. The business continued to grow in the subsequent years both through organic growth and acquisitions, including Ventilatorverken AB in Sweden, in 2001 and Kontrollelektronic AB in 2004. The modern Dantherm group of companies includes Dantherm Air Handling, manufacturing air handling products, T&O Stelectric AS, Glenco AS, and Dantherm Filtration.

Paul Arne Jensen, CEO and president at Dantherm elaborates: “Dantherm AS has three main divisions, producing a range of high-quality products and services for industrial air management. Throughout all of our operations our motto is ‘we make clean air for people’, and we always aim to ensure a good environment by cleaning, dust cleaning, heating and cooling, and dehumidifying air.

“We provide a range of services through our three business areas,” Paul continues. “One of our divisions provides insulations, including all technical equipment for buildings and services, one provides industrial ventilation and industry air treatment products, and the other, air handling products for dehumidifying, cooling and heating, and mobile air handling units. We are specialists in dehumidifying products for use in areas with water damage and buildings that need to be dried out. Each division is roughly the same size, with an annual turnover of around £100 million each.

“Our two industrial divisions supply a broad range of customers on a global basis, whereas the air handling business is primarily focused on the telecom industry, including electronic cooling and heat management,” he elaborates. “This division works around the globe, with a particular focus on OEM products for telecom network suppliers, such as Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, Samsung and other major clients. In addition to our main three divisions, we have a specialised area for defence projects and a service division.”

Paul explains that despite being a global company, and a key player in the industry, Dantherm prides itself on close co-operation with its customers: “One of our key strengths is that despite being a relatively large company, we are still very flexible, and focus on tailor-made products for OEM customers. Throughout a project we like to remain close to our customers, and we do this by thinking globally but acting locally.

“This is particularly the case when we deal with customers in the telecom industry,” he continues. “There is very close co-operation between the telecom companies and the suppliers, and we work in conjunction with them during the design stages of a project. For example, they are involved in our R&D work, and have to approve the individual ideas step-by-step. Our projects are related to the development programmes of the telecom companies as our cooling and dehumidifying systems have to be adjusted to suit the demands of new base stations.”

Dantherm Air Handling, one of the company’s three divisions, is among the world’s leading manufacturers of air handling systems. It provides tailor-made air conditioning solutions that are simple, economical and environmentally friendly. These innovative solutions make it possible to control the extremes of climate and create a healthy atmosphere, together with offering considerable protection to sealed electronic equipment.

Dantherm Air Handling’s core competencies lie in climate control and air handling, including dehumidification, heating, cooling of electronics and heat recovery. Among its catalogue of products are air handling solutions for ventilation, mobile heating and cooling, electronics cooling and heating.

Dantherm dehumidification products, both stationary and mobile variants, are ideally suited to efficiently stop water damage in buildings, and are also widely used to dry out buildings and to effectively dry-store important materials. Available in capacities ranging from 12 to 290 I/24 hours, the dehumidifiers have an integral electronic control system, and can be programmed automatically by a state-of-the-art hygrostat.

The business is currently working on an innovative new solution for telecom customers: “We are focusing on moving into environmentally friendly products by developing fuel cell technology,” Paul explains. “This is a new area for us, based around power supplies for the telecom industry. In a standard base station that connects mobile phones, there is a back up system for when the power goes down, which is normally a large battery. In a step forward for the industry, we are working on an innovative new system to use fuel cells as a battery. We have been developing it for around three or four years with a number of key customers in the sector.”

Paul reflects on the current state of the market, and the future prospects: “There are opportunities for growth in the future particularly in the telecoms, insulation and dehumidifying sectors, and we are well positioned in these markets. The advantage that we have is that in modern society there is a large focus on clean air for people, and reducing air pollution, particularly in large cities and built up areas. We need to ensure that we continue to work hard to do something about the problems of air pollution in the future.

“The main challenge that we face is the increasingly tough competition in the market, but we are well positioned, both in terms of production and our business model, to deal with these challenges,” he continues. “In terms of global competition, we are more than capable of moving our production quickly to the best areas, in order to remain close to our customers and the overall industry growth at all times.”

Despite this, Paul is confident that the company can achieve further success: “There are challenges that we have to face, but there are also large possibilities for us to grow considerably. We aim to witness an increase of our current activities by 25 to 30 per cent in four years time by focusing on the specific areas in which we see growth. We must concentrate on optimising energy consumption, and ensure that we take care of the air that we breathe every day,” he concludes.

Dantherm AS
Products: Air management solutions
Sites: Global
Employees: 3000
www.dantherm.com