Filming the Academy Award-winning blockbuster hit, Titanic, required 87,000 amps (8.5 mW) of power. Aggreko supplied it all.

The New Iberia, La.-based company provided temporary electrical power for the major lighting requirements, including evening shots. Lighting the windows of the 770-foot replica took more than 20,000 amps (2mW) alone. When the ship broke in two - and the front half sank in 40 feet of water - it took four 1-million-pound hydraulic lifts powered by Aggreko generators to lift the steel and wood Titanic replica to a vertical position. The replica was only 10 percent smaller than the actual ship.

Filming in the heat of Rosarito Beach, Mexico, required more than 100 tons of comfort cooling. Despite the warm temperatures, Aggreko also provided 600 kW of heat to raise water temperatures. Whenever the actors were in the water, Aggreko made sure the temperature was 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

The film industry is just one of many serviced by Aggreko. It's also involved in shipping, mining, food, television and other industries. You name it, Aggreko has serviced it.

Aggreko prides itself on being the world leader in the rental of temporary power, temperature control and oil-free compressed air - which it considers its niche markets.

"We remain totally committed to growing the business by pursuing a strategy based on geographic expansion, product development, market creation and global marketing," says the company's chairman, Dr. Christopher Masters.

Aggreko began in 1986 with the purchase of a small Gulf Coast power rental business. The U.S. company's 12 employees continued serving its already established oilfield market customers. By 1991, Mobile Air, Pearce Industrial and Airtech had joined the company. This allowed Aggreko to expand its equipment inventory and serve more markets. The company then moved into highly technical and major utility projects.

During 1998, Aggreko increased to 110 depots in 20 countries and now employs more than 1,300.

The publicly traded company's earnings grew 14 percent (pro forma) in 1998.

Its business mix is 56 percent power, 20 percent temperature control, 4 percent oil-free compressed air and 20 percent other markets.

In December 1997, the company completed the acquisition of Tower Tech's entire fleet of modular state-of-the-art cooling towers for $13.5 million and reached an agreement to apply its patented technology to the rental market on a global basis.

Tower Tech, the rental arm of Power Tech, produces smarTTower, a specialized tower that can handle massive cooling power jobs. The rental of a smarTTower from Aggreko can last anywhere from six months to two years.

"Notre Dame University had a big fire and we put in 10,000 tons of cooling power [with this new tower]," says Mark Conrad, vice president ­ national sales and marketing. "This gave the customer a more economical approach because the tower is a heck of a lot less expensive than renting a bunch of chillers. It's been a good acquisition for us."

Aggreko has a fleet of more than 5,000 diesel-powered generators specifically designed for the rental market. It provides electrical power for temporary, emergency and standby applications.

When winter storms hit New York, New England and eastern Canada a few years ago, residents were left without power. Aggreko provided more than 300 generators, totaling more than 90 mW of power.

Utilities, manufacturers, businesses and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) rely on Aggreko in such emergencies.

Aggreko's power fleet includes cable, transformers, switchgear, distribution panels, fuel tanks - anything that is required to provide electrical power.

Aggreko's temperature-control equipment includes water chillers, air conditioners, heaters and desiccant dryers. The water chillers range in capacity from 30 to 3,000 kW. The company designs units that can be used to produce temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius. The fleet's air-conditioning units have capacities ranging from 30 to 250 kW. These are used in offices, hospitals, temporary buildings and by the entertainment industry.

The company's electric and fume-free indirect, oil-fired heaters are used to heat buildings, tents and vessels and to maintain the right temperatures for drying paints and coatings.

Oil-free compressed air is used in the micro-electronics industry and "clean room" environments, and in the food and pharmaceutical industries to move sensitive products through the manufacturing process. It is used in processes that require the complete elimination of oil-based contaminants such as in the food, chemical, pharmaceutical and hi-tech industries.

Aggreko also services the shipping industry through a global network of more than 100 facilities. It can provide specialized equipment such as EnviroTANK - an "environmentally responsible means of transporting fuel for temporary generators," according to a company brochure. Aggreko's fuel tank line includes 1,100- and 2,300-gallon auxiliary tanks for longer trips.

Aggreko also has CargoPower units, ABS-approved power packs. These quiet units have the ability to power up to 40 refrigerated containers and withstand harsh shipping conditions.

For the past 30 years, Aggreko also has been involved in the mining market. It has developed applications to minimize acid tower cooling downtime, thereby increasing worker productivity, decreasing a rod plant furnace's cool-down period and providing comfort cooling/heating for underground and ventilation applications.

The company uses electric heaters that are 100 percent flame- and fume-free, from 50 to 150 kW, to use in mines with chemical processors and underground lines and tunnels.

It also uses 30- to 1,000-ton portable water chillers to cool mines.

Aggreko Europe is headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland, and the U.S. headquarters is in New Iberia, La.

This past year was the first full financial year of Aggreko as a separately quoted company. Revenues during the year totalled £179 million ($290 million).

Aggreko is traded on the London Stock Exchange, but is not yet traded in the United States. It is a fast-growing company that keeps expanding its markets.

Aggreko's engineers, technicians and sales team are constantly creating new markets for the group's products, according to the company's 1998 annual report.

The company has significantly expanded its temperature-control business, increasing its total fleet capacity by more than 200 percent to 400 mW in the past five years.

Aggreko's focus as a business is based on supplying power: either utilities on a temporary basis or to add some additional capacity to a facility.

"We're not a rental company by trade in that we rent a mass of items," says Conrad. "Our focus is very specialized. The sales engineers that we have within our business are technically strong in terms of dealing with specific applications of the utility-based equipment we have."

Aggreko has several specialists to turn to when customers need solutions. It takes its specialization to its network of local depots.

That specialization is the key to Aggreko's success. "We've taken not only specialization to the market, but we've taken specialization within the market," says Conrad. "Take the food industry for instance. We have our manager that focuses on that industry for us out in San Francisco and he deals with the food industry in general, but within that food industry is the bug business."

He's talking about Aggreko's new TecHeat system that offers a safe, environmentally friendly alternative to using chemicals to deal with insect infestation problems.

Aggreko's self-contained heat-treatment units are mounted on a 40-foot trailer and include heaters that can easily be rolled off the truck and into the facility.

"That's where Jeff Wall [the company's insect specialist] comes in. He's a subsection of a specialized group," Conrad says.

"In entertainment, we have a guy who doesn't do anything but television broadcasts. It's his world. It's his life. He understands it, eats it, sleeps it, breathes it.

"We've got a guy that does nothing but the movie industry. That's his life. He may not understand a sporting event, but boy he can tell you about a movie because he knows the ins and outs, requirements and needs."

Every industry that Aggreko operates in has its own set of performance criteria, whether it be setting up for the Super Bowl or getting a mine running for a few extra days.

The company provides a "mass of support to the customer including a local business locally managed by local people linked to a national support system for the industry specialization and product specialists," says Conrad. On top of that, the company has an extensive network of engineers who provide support. The local salesperson who is selling to the customer has a wealth of resources to pull from to find answers.

These are what Conrad calls "product-based specializations."

"We don't see an end to the specialization," says Conrad. The company's goal is to, someday, make the local depots specialists in the markets and products they offer their customers.

"I don't know if we can ever get there and some of it is driven by geographic location. The petrochemical industry is strong in the South so our sales fellows [there] are strong from a petrochemical standpoint vs. the movie industry - there's not that much of a need in the South compared to Los Angeles or Hollywood."

Aggreko has a network of more than 45 depots in the United States, as well as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, the Netherlands, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.

Each of the company's 11 U.S. regions has a regional manager and a regional sales manager. Each depot has a depot manager. The regional service manager's role is to ensure the quality initiatives and to support the technical needs of the business to make sure the equipment continues to function and is kept at a quality level.

Each depot earns its own profit and its own business-management staff, but the accounting, marketing and billing are done in the corporate office.

Each region has three or four depots under its management. Some depots, depending on the size, have a rental coordinator who tracks the ins and outs of equipment. They also have their own administrative staffs, technicians and salespeople.

Small depots may have a minimum of five employees whereas a large depot like Houston may have 50 employees.

Most of the equipment Aggreko purchases, with the exception of its generators, is factory fleet. The company tries to stay with a certain standardization once it gets the equipment. Purchasing its equipment new and building it to the Aggreko specifications allows the company to take advantage of the latest technological developments and utilize new environmental safety features.

"We bring it in and put our select control panel on it, we do a number of things to the unit, put additional heavy-duty skids on it - things that make it so that we can put it on a truck and travel 1,500 miles around the country because a standard piece of equipment is not going to stand up to the rigorous travel our markets demand," Conrad says.

"We take pieces of equipment and customize them for a particular industry," says Joe Jefferies, national marketing programs manager.

For example, the company has TwinPacks, a unit for the entertainment industry that contains two generators working together to provide fully redundant backup online in case one generator goes down. "These are used in live broadcast sporting events," says Jefferies.

The company manufactures its own generators, but does not sell them. "The only way you can get an Aggreko generator is if it's an old generator that we've retired," says Conrad.

All Aggreko equipment is stored in its depots across the country. The New Iberia depot, just down the road from the corporate headquarters, is the company's main power facility. All major repairs are done at the National Repair Facility near the corporate headquarters in New Iberia.

Buying the equipment is one thing. Keeping track of and managing it is another. Six years ago, Aggreko put in Fleet Track, a fleet-management system that links all of the company's systems together by modem.

How does Aggreko know what equipment it needs and what equipment needs to be at which location and when?

The company's National Logistics Team is capable of locating any piece of equipment at any given time. This group also tracks trends throughout the country and moves necessary equipment to meet a given need.

"We have a national logistics staff that deals with making sure that the equipment mix in the business is correct," says Conrad. "They'll also move equipment based on needs, demands and weather in some cases."

If a hurricane hits, the Aggreko logistics staff begins to move equipment to that area. "We begin mobilizing to move equipment to areas where it may not be needed, but we can get the equipment there and put it into place.

"A local depot might not be able to handle a massive ice storm, but by being able to have all the support of the outlying depots around it and controlling it from a central hub, we can mobilize quite a bit [of equipment] to an area," says Conrad.

Aggreko has supplied many industries with massive amounts of power. Its philosophy is the same as a rental center that rents backhoes, linens or tillers - provide your customer with a solution and he or she will come back.