It is the most invisible utility in Indian manufacturing. It fills bottles, packs biscuits, blows PET preforms into shape, drives packaging lines and keeps pharmaceutical clean rooms running — and nobody ever sees it. Compressed air touches almost everything a food, beverage or drug factory makes, which is why the air itself has to be perfect: a single trace of oil in the line can spoil a batch, fail an audit or shut a plant down. A Coimbatore company has spent six decades perfecting that invisible air, and its newest evolution just took centre stage in Mumbai.
That company is Elgi Equipments, founded in Coimbatore in 1960 and now one of the world’s leading air-compressor manufacturers. On 28 October 2026, at drinktec India at the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Mumbai, the company unveiled the next evolution of its AB Series of oil-free screw air compressors, under a simple promise: “Better Efficiency. Better Planet.” The AB Series first went global in 2019 with the slogan “Oil Free. Disrupted.” — seven years on, ELGi says, the question is no longer whether industry can produce Class 0 oil-free air, but how efficiently, reliably and responsibly it can do so over the life of the machine.
ELGi’s AB 22, part of the evolved AB Series of oil-free screw compressors. (Image: ELGi)
At the heart of the evolved series is ELGi’s patented water-injected, closed-loop technology. Instead of oil, water does the sealing and cooling inside the compression chamber, so the air that comes out meets ISO 8573 Class 0 — the highest standard of oil-free purity, where oil contamination from the compression process is simply not accepted. The company says the water is circulated in a closed loop, with condensate automatically replenishing it, so the system needs no continuous open-loop water supply and no external RO system or external water pump for its water circuit — less treatment infrastructure, less maintenance and less auxiliary power.
The efficiency gains are measured in the numbers plant engineers care about most. The company says the evolved AB Series delivers 5–6% better specific power consumption than before, with up to 2% lifecycle-cost benefit through efficient water reuse. The airend is slow-running, with durable bearings and fewer moving parts, and the company puts its life at more than 40,000 hours, backed by a five-year warranty on key AB components. Four upgrades carry the evolution: an ELGi-engineered motor developed in-house, the Neuron-4 controller for smarter, more reliable operation, Air~Alert remote monitoring that lets teams track performance and catch issues early from anywhere, and advanced corrosion resistance to keep the machine reliable across varied operating conditions.
The range spans 11–110 kW (15–150 hp), with free air delivery from 29–560 cfm and operating pressures of 4.5–12 bar — a spread that lets one platform serve a dairy’s packaging hall and a pharmaceutical plant alike. Food, beverage, dairy, breweries, bakeries and confectionery are the natural home for Class 0 air, and the company says the series also serves pharmaceuticals, electronics, automotive, power, metals, oil and gas and textiles. Its certifications match the stakes: ISO 8573 Class 0, CE and UL, CRN and DOSH, and ISO 22000:2018 food safety management for Elgi Equipments itself.
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An AB Series compressor at work in a plant environment. (Image: ELGi)
The AB Series sits on a long engineering lineage. In 2002 ELGi built the world’s smallest screw air compressor; in 2019 it showcased the world’s smallest water-injected screw compressor, and that same year it won the Deming Prize for excellence in Total Quality Management — the first globally established industrial air compressor manufacturer outside Japan to receive the honour in over six decades. More recently the company introduced its patented Demand=Match system, which intelligently matches compressed-air delivery to changing plant demand. “The AB Series has evolved through continuous engineering improvement,” said Vikas, President & Head – Global Product Management at Elgi Equipments. “For customers, the outcome is straightforward – Class 0 oil-free compressed air delivered with greater efficiency, smarter resource management and better visibility over operation.”
For food, beverage and dairy makers, the timing is sharp. India is one of the world’s great food-processing economies, and every litre of milk, every bottle and every biscuit line depends on air that cannot be allowed to contaminate what it touches. “Customers need uncompromised compressed-air quality and dependable production, but they are also looking closely at energy consumption, water use, uptime and the cost of keeping their plants running over the life of the equipment,” said Bhavesh Karia, Executive President – ISAAME & SEA at Elgi Equipments. “The AB Series brings these priorities together.” From a Coimbatore workshop in 1960 to a global stage in Mumbai, ELGi’s answer to that challenge is a machine that uses water instead of oil, watches itself from anywhere, and keeps getting more efficient with every generation — better engineering, in the company’s words, leading to better efficiency, better resource utilisation and a better planet.
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