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Informist, Thursday, Mar. 20, 2025

--Blue Star MD: To up air-conditioner prices 2-4% from Apr 1 across variants

--Blue Star MD: Forced to take 2-4% price hike to offset high input costs

AHMEDABAD – Blue Star Ltd. plans to raise prices of air-conditioners by 2-4% across variants from Apr. 1 to offset rise in costs of raw materials, said B. Thiagarajan, managing director of the air-conditioning and refrigeration major, Thursday.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event to launch smart air-conditioners, Thiagarajan said that this would be second price hike to be taken by the air-conditioning company in last two months. The air-conditioning and refrigeration major had taken a hike in prices of its air-conditioners by 4% in February.

"Every time equity markets are under pressure, the money gets diverted to metals, be it gold or copper. Copper is the key component in an air-conditioner, comprising nearly 25% of any air-conditioner. There are many more factors, be it tariff war, rising prices of copper, exchange rate fluctuation," he said giving rationale for proposed price hike.

A fortnight ago, Thiagarajan had hinted at the possibility of a price hike. Speaking to reporters in Hyderabad, he had said that the industry still depends on China for key raw materials and uncertainty in the supply chain from the country could be a cause of concern. He had then said that Blue Star was confident of maintaining its operating margins at around 8.0-8.5% levels in FY25 and beyond.

To offset the industry's dependence on China, he said that efforts were on to gradually replace use of copper in compressor with aluminium or alloys. This, he said, would help bring down costs as aluminium has a relatively better availability compared to copper.

Blue Star, which sold about a million units in 2023-24 (Apr-Mar), expects total air-conditioner sales to touch 1.5 million units in the current fiscal and 2 million units in FY26, he added. Thiagarajan said the company was aiming to achieve a room air-conditioner market share of around 13.9% in the current financial year ending Mar. 31 and of 15.5% by FY28-end. 

Shares of Blue Star Thursday ended flat at INR 2,208.65 per share on the National Stock Exchange.  End

Reported by Sunil Raghu

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

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