Published
December 29, 2022
Along
beth jojack
Oransi founder Peter Mann (L) and CTO Moe Barani with mod and mod jr HEPA air purifiers Photo credit: Don Petersen
By the end of 2023, portable air purifier maker Oranci hopes to bring to market products designed and manufactured at its new facility in Radford.
This is the second attempt by CEO Peter Mann to build an American-made HEPA (High Energy Particulate Air) air purifier since founding Oransi in 2009.
After initially selling a Chinese-made air purifier, Mann struck a deal with a Connecticut company in 2013 to manufacture two Oranci-designed models. But that stopped in July 2021.
US prices, he says.
Currently, Oransi sells four air purifiers made in China. Two of them were designed in-house and two were a collaboration between Oransi and a factory in China. Available online and through major online retailers, Oransi water filters range in price from $149 to $499. Approximately 70% of Oransi’s customers are consumers, with the rest being businesses and government purchasers.
Mann worked at Dell Inc. as a senior manager. Before co-founding WSA in the early 2000s, it operated as a series of e-commerce sites selling products ranging from tankless water heaters to generators and air purifiers. In 2005, he launched Alen Corp., his own brand of air conditioners and purifiers. Around 2009, he sold his WSA and Allen ownership to focus on building Oransi.
“We wanted to create a brand and develop a product,” says Mann. “We knew we would sell directly to the consumer side, but we wanted to do the full manufacturing side.”
In 2015, Mann approached Moe Barani, founder of Aspen Motion Technologies in Radford, about contract manufacturing Oransi, but without success. Time passes and Bharani and Mann are reunited. Barani left Aspen Motion in 2018 to start Aviemore Technologies Inc., a Radford-based manufacturer of motion control products. The pair started talking again.
In April 2021, Oranci, then based in Raleigh, North Carolina, invested $5.6 million to establish a manufacturing facility in Radford. Four months later, Oransi and Aviemore merged. Barani became Chief Technology Officer and the two began researching air purifiers from scratch.
“So we looked at every component and redesigned almost every component that we use in our new air purifier,” says Barani. “So it’s not just the motor or the drive, it’s the whole system.”
Oransi’s first air purifier, made in Radford, will go into production early in the second quarter, with the second air purifier starting production later this year or early 2024.