One of the world’s largest air conditioner manufacturers, Midea Air Conditioners, has declared its strong intentions to move into the Australian market.

In Australia, Castel Electronics is the exclusive distributor of Midea air conditioners, which it has been importing for the past five years. The company says the brand is still relatively unknown to the Australian public, a situation that Castel is says it is fast rectifying with its current aggressive marketing push into Australia’s major markets.

China’s domination of the world air conditioning market was reflected in figures recently published in JARN (Japan Air Conditioning, Heating & Refrigeration News),  its overview of the 2011 market estimated world production to be 96.7 million units, an increase of 7.5 per cent over 2010. More than 60 per cent of the units were manufactured in China where two major manufacturers dominate the market.

China’s largest manufacturer for export is Midea Air Conditioners who sell 30 million units in over 150 countries around the world each year – over 30 per cent of the world’s total air conditioning market.

Part of Castel’s aggressive push has been to snare one of the major players in Australia’s air conditioning scene, Bernie Bugdalski, who joined the organization in April.

Castel says Bugdalski is recognised as an air conditioning industry authority throughout South East Asia having held senior positions at Fujitsu between 1997 and December 2011.  His roles included ‘Director Product & Project Development’ to which he was appointed in 2007, and, prior to that, Director Marketing & Sales, in 2003.

During his time at Fujitsu commercial/specialist air conditioning sales grew  significantly as a percentage of Fujitsu’s total sales.

Bugdalski was elected President of AREMA (Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Equipment Manufacturers Association of Australia) in 2008 and he has also served as a director on the board of Refrigerant Reclaim Australia. In 2011 his contribution to the Australian air conditioning industry was rewarded with entry to the ARBS Hall of Fame.

Castel’s Managing Director Michael Kwong says the strategic timing of Bernie’s appointment at Castel is perfect to help oversee Midea’s rapid emergence in the Australian air conditioning market.

Bugdalski, together with Kwong led a group of prominent Australian air conditioning personalities on a familiarization tour of Midea’s headquarters in Guangdong China, where, says Bernie, they were all “blown away by the sheer magnitude of the Midea set up.”

In China the Government has been consulting with senior Midea technicians to establish the national standard for VRF accreditation. The China National Institute of Standardization (CNIS) has selected Midea as the exclusive supplier of VRF’s for the ‘China energy efficiency label test lab data consistency verification project,’ which it is currently implementing. The two parties will also carry out technical cooperation.

The China Quality Certification Centre (CQCC) also recently announced that Midea’s full DC inverter air conditioner was the first to pass the ‘Long Term Energy Saving Performance Assessment of Residential Air Conditioners’ again signifying the formal application of a new standard.

In response to this recognition Midea General Manager Tian Mingli pledged that the company would “continue to give emphasis to developing products with cutting edge technologies and superior quality, to improve people’s living environment as well as boosting the healthy development of the industry.”