UNITAIR launches anti-covid units

UNITAIR launches anti-covid units

Published by Romain Vauzelle on Friday 29th January 2021
Photo credits : R Boutillier / City of Arles

Manufactured in the workshop of an Arles-based company, the STERIMOB eliminates 99.7% of the traces of Covid-19 present in the air. Photo credits : R Boutillier / City of Arles
In the facility for screening and vaccination located in the Arles Congress Centre, two machines which look like fridges arouse people’s curiosity. They are in fact air treatment units, which in just a few minutes render possible the elimination of 99.7% of Covid-19 traces potentially present in the air. These state-of-the-art machines are manufactured close by (a few hundred metres away) in the UNITAIR factory, installed over four decades ago on the side of the canal from Arles to Bouc.

Already specialized in the widely successful STERIBLOC air treatment units, the company, under the direction of Gérard Barachini, has designed a new model, compact and easy to move, but above all equipped with a photocatalytic generator which destroys the virus. “We were at the Dubai Medical Exhibition at the time when the coronavirus appeared in China. When we came back to Arles, we began to work on developing an adequate response “ says Cedric Berton, the company’s sales director.

In Arles just a few months later, the first “STERIMOB” was born. “We made the most of the lull in our activity induced by the Covid crisis to develop new products” explains Gérard Barachini. And hence tackle new markets sectors: UNITAIR, usually selling its know-how exclusively to hospitals, now manufactures a small made-to-measure model for the tertiary sector. “The STERIMOB may easily be positioned in classrooms, playschools, waiting rooms or open spaces” explains Cedric Berton. Tested and validated by a major French research institute, the first machines have already been installed in the Paris region and in Algeria.