P&I Story


After Bill Reid first developed his commercial air filter in 1921, the business started to grow and progress rapidly over the coming decades. In a relatively short period of time American Air Filter® was becoming a leading name in the world of air filtration.

In 1932, AAF® launched the RotoClone®, not an air filter but a wet dust collector. The product was targeting the air pollution control market, providing a solution for cleaning exhaust air in many industrial processes. The RotoClone® was particularly suitable for applications where sticky dust was a major problem, ideal for the food and beverage sector. It was regarded as a pioneering product and a move away from traditional air filter products.

By 1966, AAF® was seen as world-leading supplier of air filters and opened a UK facility in Cramlington. At this time, air pollution control was a growing market and the UK increased the focus on dust collection equipment. Designing, manufacturing, installing and servicing large filtration equipment became a key part of the business strategy.

During this period the business also started to provide filtration systems for nuclear power, diesel engines and gas turbines. Focusing on the entire filtration system and the power and offshore oil and gas sectors, AAF started to appeal to new customers and started to gain a reputation manufacturing equipment of a completely different magnitude. This could include filter houses up to 250 tonnes, taking filtration technology to new levels.

Within AAF this area of the business became known internally as Power & Industrial (P&I). Today, the Power & Industrial Group is made up of a dedicated global team with a wide range of in-house capabilities from design and manufacturing to installation and service. Our product range now expands beyond air filtration with a new wave of industrial air solutions including acoustic enclosures, silencers, dampers, advanced cooling and heating technology and much more.

The expansion and ambition of the P&I Group continues and the gas turbine market alone now has well over 6,500 installations around the world. ‘Better Air is Our Business’ has been our mantra across all of AAF, and in the P&I Group, there is a lot more to ‘better air’ than first meets the eye.