PARIS, FRANCE: Toshiba Carrier Corp aims to ride a wave of environmentally-conscious energy consumption and sell power-frugal Japanese-made air conditioning systems in the United States from the end of 2010 to help it break the $1 billion sales mark worldwide.

Akira Inoue, managing officer of the joint venture between Toshiba Corp and the Carrier unit of United Technologies Corp, said this would be the first time the firm has sold Japanese products in the North American market since the venture's creation in 1999.

"At the moment, in the U.S. they use big central systems but we expect our energy-efficient more decentralised systems to find a good reception there," Inoue told Reuters.

Inoue was in Paris for the Interclima industry fair, where Toshiba Carrier is launching a new flagship product, the SMMSi air conditioning system, which is smaller, more frugal and powerful than its predecessor.

"We are launching in France because it is the most important market for us in Europe," Inoue said, adding that this was because of French regulations and incentives aimed at making new buildings more energy efficient.

Toshiba Carrier made sales of $630 million outside Japan in 2009 and aims to break the $1 billion mark in 2012.

High potential in Africa

For this it is banking on new products in Europe, the sale of Japanese products in Japan, targeted sales in high-potential countries in Africa and Latin America and the sale of Chinese products in the rest of Asia.

In Africa, the company is looking at South Africa and northern African countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

In the HVAC market - heating, ventilating and air conditioning products -- the company's main rivals are General Electric Co, Panasonic Corp and Daikin Industries Ltd, although the market is very fragmented, with many smaller rivals.

For Toshiba, France is also interesting because its economic growth is more stable than other European countries at a time that new construction in Spain and Britain is taking a hit.

The group is working on intelligent air conditioning systems for offices, factories and houses, which allow real-time at-distance monitoring and steering of the equipment.

In a house, a system could combine energy from solar panels and the grid, store energy, use cold water for cooling as well as various other elements that would cut both the energy bill and greenhouse gas emissions.

Asked whether the Toyota Motor Corp accelerator and brakes recall had undermined the quality reputation of Japanese products, Inoue smiled.

"It has not damaged the reputation of all Japanese companies but it is a reminder that we need to work even harder on quality," he said, adding that the fact that Japanese companies had moved over the past decades from making everything in Japan to running factories elsewhere meant that quality control had become more complicated. "But that is my personal opinion."