Faisal Jassim Trading Company has launched 800 PUMPS, a service facility for the maintenance of pumps. Nadir Ilmas, Division Manager, ITT Pumps Division, explained to Climate Control Middle East the different aspects of the new initiative.

What is 800 PUMPS all about?

800 PUMPS is a separate, dedicated initiative for the maintenance of pumps. We have observed situations where a lot of small companies vanish from the country and, at the end of the day, their customers suffer, because they don’t know where to go for maintenance. Yes, there are alternatives, but more often than not, they prove to be expensive. So Faisal Jassim came up with the 800 PUMPS initiative to offer pump maintenance service as a rational price.

Another need for 800 PUMPS was that there was quite a bit of merger activity in the GCC, and usually when a merger occurs, the mother company often will eradicate the product line of the company it is taking in, and so the product line is wiped out. We are here to offer a service to those that bought the products prior to the merger and discovered they had nowhere to go for service.

Are you brand-neutral, then?

Yes, we will be offering this service not only to pumps we distribute, for instance ITT, but also to other brands out in the market.

Are you extending this service to the entire GCC?

The toll-free facility is open only to customers in the UAE, but the landline is for the entire GCC. Saudi Arabia could be an interesting market, and we would look to replicate the toll-free facility there.

What is the scope of your offering and your expertise?

Faisal Jassim, as a company, has sold at least a billion UAE dirhams worth of pumps in the last 10-15 years. We handle not only the mechanical aspects of pumps but also the electrical aspects. We do sequencing and have in-house expertise for controls. We can handle pumps deployed in villas to those in large petrochemical industries.

Our in-house expertise also includes balancing machines and coating machines (for internal coating).

We are trying to put up a testing facility for the hydraulic performance of pumps. It will take a year’s time to build a test rig, because we would need power supply for that.

How important is coating for the proper functioning of pumps?

If internal coating of pumps is executed, then we can see a 2-3% increase in efficiency; also, internal coating enhances the life of the pumps. There are many companies who sell internal coating but do not do the actual coating.

Coating is more or less a retrofit job for repair of centrifugal pumps. Owing to constant exposure to water, there are corrosion issues and loss of pump thickness and isolated holes. We counter these with ceramic coating; we also do fusion bonded epoxy.