Dipl. Eng. July Armianov, manager of “TANGRA” gave interview for installation magazine “TD Installations” in connection with the birthday of the company.
Mr. Armyanov, TANGRA is a company well known on the Bulgarian market, which recently celebrated its 22nd birthday. What makes it a preferred HVAC partner?
Quality, cost and installation period are the main criteria for each product or service. This applies to our work too. Obviously we find the right balance. Well-prepared professionals and specialized approach to each project are also important. We offer a wide range of products for ventilation, air conditioning and heating. Most of them are manufactured in our plants. However for other products our partners are some of the best producers in Europe. We also constantly monitor the trends in our industry. And perhaps last but not least – we love our work!
What are the changes that happened in your work from the beginning in 1989 till nowadays?
Many things changed during these 22 years. In the beginning we were only designers – in practice we were offering intellectual product. Later we learned how to produce and install. Today we offer a complete package of products and services in the field of heating, ventilation and air conditioning. This means to investigate customer requirements, prepare a project, produce products for the installation, mount the installation and put it in operation, and finally the client must be satisfied.
When we started 22 years ago, we were only 6 people. Now we are 30 times more. We have a construction and design engineering department, a specialized HVAC laboratory, 2 factories, installation teams, shopping centers in Sofia, Varna and Burgas. Our products are selling successfully in over 10 European countries.
What are the latest trends in the field you are work and what are news in your product lines?
Heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems spend a lot of energy: in winter – for heating; in the summer for cooling; and during the whole year for ventilation of the premises. The price of the energy increased about 5 times over the past 10 years. Environmental pollution due to energy consumption is a major problem. These are two objectives that affects our specialty.
More than 15 years we are dealing with heat recovery ventilation systems. Using heat or cold from air discharges we help in reducing energy costs by 75%. These heat recovery ventilation systems require an initial investment, but the payback period rarely exceeds 2 years. Of course, the more expensive is energy, the higher efficiency is needed. Increasing efficeincy and preparing more and more energy saving heat recovery installations are excellent challanges for us.
Our newest challange is the range of pellets boilers (biomass) that we started two years ago. Pellets are pressed wood waste, ie renewable energy source. Burning pellets does not pollute the environment and in the same time the price paid by the customer is much lower than if heated by diesel fuel, oil, electricity or natural gas. Our boilers are equiped with systems for easy control of combustion and automatic cleaning. Customer commitments are minimal. Nowadays we have two ranges of pellet boilers and we are planning a new range for the Western makrets. In the current products the efficiency is equal or higher than 94%.
What are the most important projects in the history of TANGRA? Which are the latest projects you work at?
It is difficult to identify one or more project sites as the most interesting or important. We executed installations in many hotels, including several 5-star hotels. We did installations in administrative and commercial buildings with hundreds thousand square meters area. However, we prefer to execute installations in manufacturing plants. These planst means new jobs, new production lines, increase in parnters profits and so on. A bread factory with total area of 27 000m2 is one of our recent projects and we are happy because of the challanges for energy saving in it. We made installations that save energy not only from the ventilation but also from the production of bread.
Among the biggest challenges in our history I could mention the reconstruction of filter systems in Nuclear Power Plant in Kozloduy, which handled several million cubic meters of air per hour. It was necessary to take into consideration the situation of available installations, combining them with our products and last but not least, to be accepted by European certification organization.
Multifunctional complex “Arco Towers” is the largest project we have designed. Its construction has not begun, but the fact that our company was choosen and we developed a design for a project of 300 000 square meters area is a prize for us. Our visit to a colleagues of us in Dubai during the construction of “Burj Khalifa” (the tallest building in the world – 828 m) was of great importance and helped us in the project. There we saw really how to perform installations in skyscrapers.
What is the direction for the future development of the company?
In the beginning our main goal was to become popular in Bulgaria. When this happened, we continue expansion of markets on the Balkan Peninsula. Our current goal is to become well known in Europe. We are making progress in this direction, but there is still a lot of work to be done …