camfil farr says it provides products that give customers greater value and better cost of ownership.

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Camfil Farr has built a worldwide presence in the air filtration industry with a simple yet effective sales pitch: the company’s products require a larger up-front investment than the competition, but it is a fraction of the cost of lifecycle savings’ potential. And the payback is immediate.   

“Certainly, some customers are more focused on front-end costs,” says Kevin Wood, vice president of sales and marketing for the company’s U.S. operations. “But if they try to delay the filter change outs to save money, the money saved up front is 1/10th of an energy penalty they’ll pay if a filter is left in too long.   

“It’s a win-win value proposition, and we are unique in the market for total cost of ownership,” Wood says. “Camfil developed a lifecycle co­sting modeling software in 1992 that can compare air filter options under any operating conditions (airflow, hours of operation, contaminant levels, local energy cost) and determine the optimum solution for cost savings. The program is based on actual filter performance from 17 years of testing our, and competitors, products in actual building installations.”   

Camfil Farr Group was founded in Trosa, Sweden, in 1963 by the Larson family – which is still the company’s principal owners. Camfil opened its first U.S. location in 1985 and in 2001 acquired Farr Co., one of the largest and oldest U.S.-based air filtration manufacturers.

Diversified Offerings
Camfil Farr primarily serves three market segments:

• Comfort air – This includes filtration products for protect people from contaminants in commercial and industrial buildings;
• Clean process – These are filters that protect a production process of a product, such as pharmaceutical manufacturing and semiconductor facilities that must operate clean rooms for fabrication; and
• Safety and protection – These are filters that are used to protect the environment. These products collect hazardous materials that cannot be al­lowed into the atmosphere.
  

Wood says the comfort air products account for 45 percent of Camfil Farr’s sales. “We have products in each product-type category that outperform competitors as far as effective life in the system, consuming less energy, reducing labor and waste, and lowering carbon footprint,” he says.    

In today’s economy, sustainability is a core of most firms’ economic and social commitments, Wood says. “Not only do we help cus­­tomers meet their sustainability initiatives, but we are the only one in our industry to have a formalized program that guides every operation and includes an annually published report on metrics and progress,” he notes.   

Clean process represents 32 percent of total sales and centers around providing high purity HEPA filtration for clean room spaces used to produce everything from medicines and medical devises to semiconductor chips and compact and DVD discs.   

Safety and protection is 23 percent of sales and captures highly contaminated particles from biosafety labs doing critical research on chemical weapons and pandemic diseases to radioactive materials from nuclear processing and power generation facilities, the company says.

‘Cannot Be Copied’
In the comfort air market, Camfil Farr sells its products through stocking distributors who typically serve a local or regional market. These agents have exclusive territories and are highly trained air quality experts. The company produces its products at multiple manufacturing plants throughout North America.    

Camfil Farr is strongly committed to R&D and will introduce between five and 10 new products annually in North America. In 2008, about 30 percent of the company’s total sales came from products introduced since the beginning of 2004.   

“We are constantly raising the bar on product performance to keep our competitive edge and offer more value to our customers,” Wood says. “Another strength of Camfil is most key critical production equipment is built in-house. We have our own machine designing center in Europe and locally in our North American facilities that can design and build equipment, so our ability to produce superior performance cannot be copied or effectively mimicked.”

Showing the Value
Camfil Farr aims to grow its market share because its total cost of ownership capabilities are unique and separate them. “Companies have been taught over the years to deal with filters as a commodity instead of valued assets, but that’s changing,” Wood says. “We continue to provide products that give our customers greater value, better total cost of ownership and solve solutions that haven’t been solved in the past.”