Lumpi-Berndorf Draht -und Seilwerk GmbH” was born in 2005 from the merger of “Ing. Josef Lumpi Drahtwerk GmbH” with “Berndorf F.A.S. GmbH & Co KG”. Both the companies were in traditional businesses of electric energy transfer. We had an interaction with Mr. Rainer Purzelmayer (Head of Sales, plant Berndorf) who was present in Gridtech 2011 to introduce their new solution in the form of black conductor.
On their interest in India they said “our interest is to first penetrate into the market by producing conductors in Europe and ship it to India. But due to the high transportation cost as compared to the conductors itself, we are thinking of either checking the possibility of opening our own factory here or having a partnership with some conductor manufacturer.”
Commenting on the key products and the target customer they said “our key product is black conductor basically its painted Black which helps to get self cooling effect from 80 degree onwards. So the absorption is less and the radiation is bigger. In terms of value it gives increased capacity from 50 to 100% with the same conductor. For this we are targeting companies like Reliance and local conductor manufacturers as they don’t know how to make black conductor.
Difference in the cost “First of all we need to understand that it’s not mere a conductor, but it’s a solution. We need to use stronger core materials which are very expensive. Special core is used inside the conductor which makes the cost 4 times higher than the basic conductor. We should not look at the cost of the conductor rather we should look at the cost of whole project. Normally every pole has certain loading capacity and if you want to transfer more energy you have to put more conductors. Then the pole will become heavier and everything breaks down so it’s not possible. So we are offering the solutions with same dimensions, same weight, and same look alike but with increased capacity. The other benefit is that, you can have it in existing infrastructure. The conductor may comprise of just 10 or 20% of the total cost, but the poles will be safe.
On demand they foresee in India for Black conductor “There is a project for 25,000 km already in the market, but not started. The target is 2 years. We see lot of interest from the government & the manufactures etc. Some companies want technology transfer for black conductors but we want to supply only the product, so we are trying for partnership.