It is currently working on the prototype that needs to be approved by the authorities before going into production. Electroarges partnered with the University of Pitesti and the Dacia Renault group for the ventilator project.
The devices should be made in the same plant that makes vacuum cleaners, but in a separate department, the officials of the company say. The vacuum cleaner production continues at peak capacity, they added.
“Electroarges has analyzed the possibility of adjusting (partly i.e.) its production to the urgent demands of the medical system by making some equipment that is needed right away to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic,” the company officials say.
The research and development project for the mechanical ventilator that Electroarges started has a team of 14 people working on it – four Dacia Renault engineers, four Electroarges engineers, three senior software programmers and two professors from the Faculty of Electronics of the University of Pitesti, including its dean, Mihai Oproescu. The project supervisor is Alexandru Sarghe, development advisor with Electroarges.
A prototype should be done by May 15, 2020, as well as component standardization, so the mechanical ventilator could later go into production at Electroarges, the company officials said.
Electroarges is also doing R&D on a powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR) for medical personnel. The prototype has already been completed and is to be sent to for testing to the Health Ministry.
Electroarges posted RON63 million net revenue in the first quarter, 20% higher than in the year-ago period. It posted almost RON200 million revenue last year. In March 2020, it manufactured the highest monthly amount of vacuum cleaners in the last 15 years, more than 175,000. It made more than 1.5 million vacuum cleaners in 2019.
Electroarges makes vacuum cleaners under a contract for Germany’s Kärcher, which also has a plant of its own in Curtea de Arges.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)