Mumbai, July 18: Blue Star has entered into a strategic alliance with ISA of Italy to provide supermarket and food refrigeration solutions.

“We hope to ride on the organised retail boom in the country through hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenient stores,” Blue Star executive director T.G.S. Babu said.

“Huge investments have been lined up in the sector by Reliance, Fortune, Bharti and Tata to tackle the retail as well as the back-end operations of supermarkets,” said Babu.

ISA, which clocked a turnover of $200 million last fiscal, caters to supermarket giants like Carrefour, Spar and Ahold and MNCs like Nestle, Unilever and Coca-Cola.

“In the first year, we will import and market equipment under the Blue Star-ISA brand. However, in the second year, we will explore the possibility of manufacturing a limited range of ISA products in India,” said Babu. Blue Star makes modular cold rooms and chest-type deep freezers at its Bharuch plant.

Blue Star pegs the market potential of such equipment at Rs 100 crore in the first year, which will go up in a phased manner to Rs 400 crore in the second year and further to above Rs 600 crore. “Supermarkets use a lot of refrigeration equipment and we expect to get a decent share of the market,” said Babu.

“We expect to achieve an additional turnover of Rs 20 crore in the first year and between Rs 50 and Rs 100 crore in the second year by distributing the ISA range,” he added.

The leading central airconditioning and commercial refrigeration company, which achieved a turnover of Rs 1,178 crore last fiscal, expects to clock a turnover of Rs 1,500 crore this year.

Blue Star also plans to venture into the bulk cold storage segment within a year. “We are in talks with several MNCs in Europe, the US and Japan as we need a strong technology partner,” added Babu.

“We have been on the lookout for a partner to participate in the growing cold chain equipment storage segment in India,” said Marco Giulietti, managing director of ISA.