Homebase continues to strengthen its range of kitchen appliances as it announces a new partnership with Miele.
Miele ovens, hobs, extraction, refrigeration, dishwashers and laundry products will be available for customers to purchase online and in showrooms from 15 December 2020. The Miele range of appliances will be on display in 15 stores around the country,
Hitachi has concluded an agreement to transfer all outstanding shares in its subsidiary Hitachi Compressor (Thailand) to Midea Electric Trading (Singapore), a subsidiary of China’s Midea Group.
Hitachi Compressor (Thailand) currently supplies its compressors to Midea, one off the world’s largest refrigerator manufacturers.
Hitachi Compressor (Thailand) sees the deal strengthening its competitiveness by improving its procurement capabilities and expanding its supply chain. In addition, the Midea Group will utilise Hitachi Compressor (Thailand) as an important production base in the ASEAN region for future business expansion
Boutique Japanese appliance maker Balmuda set out to make the perfect slice of toast, using the right combination of temperature, moisture and cooking time. Now, it looks like the company will have to bring as much care and attention to its stock price.
The company behind the $230 toaster which is now being sold outside of Japan and South Korea, saw its shares double on their first day of trading on Wednesday. The stock was set to rise by its limit Thursday, potentially giving Balmuda a market value of 35.2 billion yen ($340 million). It’s a heady debut for founder Gen Terao, a high-school dropout who owns three-quarters of the company.
Since the toaster’s debut in 2015, Balmuda has expanded into a range of appliances that include a rice cooker, room fan and vacuum cleaner. Like its products, the company’s shares are on track to be expensive. They’re currently worth about 40 times last year’s earnings, a valuation more than double that of Panasonic Corp., the mainstay of Japanese appliance makers.null
“Balmuda, like its products, is easy to understand,” said Kazuo Kishi, an analyst at Ace Securities and the only one who has issued a report on the company. Although Kishi hasn’t yet rated the stock or set a price target, he expects Balmuda’s shares to climb higher this week as retail investors flock to the stock.
Balmuda, based in Tokyo’s suburbs, was the first to seek to transform the humble toaster into a high-tech, and high priced, gadget. Then last year Mitsubishi’s took on the toaster challenge and introduced the Bread Oven, a $270 gadget that makes a single slice of toast at a time. Mitsubishi’s toaster seals bread inside a metal box and transfers heat using two plates at temperatures as high as 260 degrees Celsius (500 degrees Fahrenheit).
Both have their merits. The Balmuda can take a stale rubbery croissant and turn it into a flaky delight. The Bread Oven makes exquisite French toast.
Balmuda is among several companies listing on Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Mothers market in the remaining months of 2020. The toaster maker’s shares remained untraded early on Thursday, as the number of bidders outweighed sellers.
The company will use part of the 2.5 billion yen in proceeds from the initial public offering to boost marketing by 35%, including in the U.S., and spend 600 million yen on developing new products over the next two years. While Balmuda designs and markets its appliances, production is outsourced to domestic and overseas manufacturers.
Turkey’s leading household appliances maker Arcelik AS signed a deal to buy 60% of Hitachi Global Life Solutions Inc.’s for $300 million to deliver on its strategy to expand in emerging markets.
Arcelik and Hitachi GLS will form a new company that Arcelik will control to run operations in the home appliances market, excluding Japan, the Turkish company said in a filing to the stock exchange on Wednesday. The total transaction value is calculated on a cash-free and debt-free basis for the business,
Arcelik’s shares rose as much as 1% at the start of trading in Istanbul but were down 0.4% at 31.20 liras as of 10:04 a.m. Bloomberg reported on Friday that Arcelik was in talks to buy Hitachi’s oversees home appliance business.
The transaction includes two subsidiaries of Hitachi GLS with manufacturing facilities in Thailand and China, and 10 sales companies in the region that mainly sell refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, rice cooker, water pumps and air conditioners. The annual production capacity of Thai and Chinese manufacturing firms is 3 million units of refrigerators and washing machines in total, according to the filing.
The consolidated net revenue of the acquired business, excluding Japan, was around $1 billion. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, was about $70 million for the fiscal year ending on March 31. After the transfer, the product range is expected to be expanded with dryers, dishwashers, ovens and other small household appliances.wth Push
Arcelik sells products under 12 brands including Beko, Flavel, Grundig and Altus, according to its website. It’s expanded through acquisitions over the years, purchasing companies including South Africa’s Defy Appliances Pty Ltd. and Pakistan’s Dawlance Group.
The Turkish company has singled out the Asia Pacific region as a key growth market and last year agreed to buy control of the company that operates the Singer brand in Bangladesh.
“Asia Pacific will be the accelerator of the growth in our sector in the next 10 years with its increasing medium-class population, household revenues and improving retail channels and life style,” Arcelik’s chief executive officer, Hakan Bulgurlu, said in an emailed statement.
Arcelik AS in Turkey is in advanced talks with Japanese industrial conglomerate Hitachi Ltd. to take over overseas household equipment business, people with knowledge said.
An agreement is likely to be reached within the next few weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. According to the people, the transaction can be valued at about $ 500 million, according to the people.
The potential deal would contribute to the $ 83 billion in sales announced by Japanese companies this year, 38% higher than a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Hitachi has requested separate offers for its listed metal unit because it wants to streamline its business, Bloomberg News reported. It also left a UK nuclear project in September
Hibberd Distribution Ltd (HDL), has seen its highest sales on record during October, with November continuing the trend as the busiest month of the year.
To keep up with demand HDL, which operates from a 15,000 sq ft headquarters at Blackpool Airport Enterprise Zone, has taken a further 32,000 sq ft warehouse at Squires Gate Industrial Estate and has employed a further six staff in the past two months at the Blackpool depot.
Now in its 21st year, the company distributes and imports kitchens and appliances such as Bosch, Hotpoint, Neff, Electrolux and Zanussi to the trade, house builders and direct to the public through its online shop, and has an additional 22,000 sq ft distribution unit in Middlesbrough, employing a total of 72 staff.
German-based manufacturer of high-end household appliances Miele said on Friday it opened its seventh showroom in Romania following a 150,000 euro investment ($181,733).
Located in the centre of capital Bucharest, the showroom has an area of 80 sq m, Miele said in a press release.
“Calea Victoriei is traditionally an exclusive commercial destination, so the new Miele showroom naturally comes to enrich this offer of premium products,” Miele Romania general manager Loredana Butnaru said.
Miele now operates three showrooms located in Bucharest and one each in Constanta, Timisoara, Oradea and Iasi.
In addition, over 70 stores specializing in furniture and independent electro-IT networks are selling Miele’s household appliances across Romania.
Miele is a German manufacturer of high-end domestic appliances and commercial equipment, which employs 20,200 in Austria, Germany, Romania, Czech Republic and China.
DeLonghi has reached a definitive agreement with affiliates of Centre Lane Partners to acquire Capital Brands Holdings, Inc., a leader in the personal blenders segment with the Nutribullet and Magic Bullet brands.
The price payable by DeLonghi for Capital Brands is approximately $420 million. The closing of the transaction is expected to take place before the end of 2020.
With its research and development centers in Boston and in Connecticut, Capital Brands brings innovative technologies to the development of products that cater to an evolved concept of nutrition, the company said. Centre Lane Partners acquired Capital Brands in 2018. Nutribullet and Magic Bullet are highly recognizable brands that have earned a strong reputation among consumers. Capital Brands’ strengths and expertise will contribute to accelerate DeLonghi Group’s growth in the world of healthy foods, the company added.
Massimo Garavaglia, CEO of DeLonghi, said, “This acquisition is a perfect fit for the DeLonghi Group and is consistent with our objectives of geographical expansion and growth by external lines. Moreover, it represents a strategic value from several viewpoints: we add a young and dynamic brand to our portfolio; we enlarge our range of iconic products with an important presence in the blender segment; we increase our penetration in an expanding and strategically important market like the USA; and last, but not least, we strengthen the DeLonghi Group’s leadership in the sector of food preparation.”
DeLonghi Group owns such brands as DeLonghi, Braun, Kenwood and Ariete.
Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Los Angeles, Capital Brands develops and sells domestic appliances with a focus on wellness nutrition to households in over 100 markets worldwide under the Nutribullet and Magic Bullet brands. Capital Brands forecasts net revenues of approximately $290 million for year 2020, ahead of last year sales. With this transaction, the U.S. become the largest market for the DeLonghi Group, with aggregate turnover in excess of $500 million.
Rich Krause, CEO of Capital Brands, said, “We are very pleased to be joining the DeLonghi Group and to have the opportunity to align our strong brands with theirs. We are excited about the future growth opportunities that we will be able to exploit in the U.S. and internationally with the support of our new shareholder.”
On October 19, Gorenje’s cooking appliances factory produced the millionth cooking appliance this year. Never in the history of Gorenje have we reached this annual milestone so quickly, as we usually reached one million manufactured appliances only at the end of December. We donated the jubilee cooking appliance to our colleague Dragica Senić from the galvanising plant.
Orders and consequently production volumes increased after the takeover of Gorenje and the arrival of the new owner Hisense, so that last year we manufactured the millionth device much earlier as usual (in November), and this year, despite a severe crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic when in March we had to shut down factories for three weeks, the millionth cooking appliance was produced as early as October 19th.
“In the spring, we almost gave up hope because of the coronavirus situation, as orders were reduced overnight to practically zero,” says Rok Borovnik from Production Planning at the Cooking appliances factory. “Nevertheless, we picked up quickly, sales secured new orders and based on the good results of increasing productivity and good work of our production workers we immediately made up for the lag and fulfilled our obligations to the Sales department and thus to our customers.”
In August, we received a record amount of orders, for certain types of appliances up to 25% more than last year. From July to August 2020, the quantities increased from 110,000 appliances per month to more than 180,000 appliances and from here only increased further. In September, we reached a record of 184,324 manufactured cooking appliances. As a result, we also manufactured the millionth appliance on October 19, thus setting a new milestone in Gorenje’s production. But we already have new records in sight, as the annual amount of cooking appliances produced (1,373,000) will be the largest so far (last year we produced 1,200,000 appliances). We have already filled our orders by March 2021, which is very encouraging for the future of the cooking appliance factory.
“We donated the millionth appliance – an oven – to our colleague Dragica Senić from the galvanising plant, and this was also a symbolic gesture to show that the galvanising plant is now a part of the cooking appliances factory, not only formally, but is the heart of cooking appliances production. We are all one team and through teamwork we strive to grow and improve results, ”said Jernej Heindl, director of the Cooking Appliances Factory. “We are very proud of the milestone we have reached and we are boldly looking at new, ambitious goals. Congratulations to the entire team of cooking appliances, who with their commitment and dedication in difficult conditions have shown that we can handle even such great challenges. “
Employee Dragica Senić, who was with the help of the union chosen as the recipient of the millionth appliance, has been employed by Gorenje for 36 and a half years, all the time working in the galvanising plant. “Our millionth appliance is definitely going to the right person,” said Zlatko Svečko, head of the galvanising plant Galvana. “Dragica is a trademark of Galvana and with her knowledge, accuracy and diligence is respected in her work environment, and she successfully passes all this on to younger colleagues.”
“I am very proud of our achievement and I am glad that I was chosen for this award, I really did not expect it,” said Dragica Senić. “I have been working at Galvana since 1984, and from the very beginning I have also worked night shifts, Saturdays, I have never refused work. I am proud of my work and of the fact that we managed to set new records this year despite such a difficult situation. ” And what will be the first delicious dish cooked in Dragica’s new 3 in 1 combined oven (convection, steam and microwave oven in one appliance)? »My husband will be able to tell you that, he cooks most of the time, while I do the tidying up,« Dragica laughed.
Beko US has named Zach F. Elkin as president, to direct the expansion of the company’s home appliance brands in North America. Hasan Ali Yardimci, who led the company since its 2016 entry into the US market, was appointed to oversee Arçelik’s Beko Electronics España operations in Spain, Portugal, and South America.
The new president comes from a long career in the top management of important home appliances companies: he was US general manager of Signature Kitchen Suite® at LG Electronics, Inc., reinvigorating the company’s luxury kitchen appliance category. Previously, he held leadership positions at Sears Holdings and Bosch Siemens Home Appliances Corporation, where he was credited with transforming the Thermador® and Gaggenau® brands in the US. A leader in the industry for more than 25 years, Elkin is well known for using innovative marketing, product design, and positioning strategies to build global businesses and brands.
«I am honored to join Beko US at such an exciting time of opportunity and potential – he stated -As consumers and businesses alike adapt to current challenges, Beko has already shown impressive signs of growth—achieving record sales in Q3 and significantly expanding its US dealer and distribution network. I look forward to leading from a place of strength and strategy and continuing this upward trajectory.»
In handing over the management role to Elkin, Yardimci expressed confidence in the company’s continued progress. «With the support of our trade partners, the Beko US team has quickly and successfully built our US operations from the ground up and established the high quality, performance, and value of our products. Under Zach’s leadership, the company is well-positioned to accelerate that growth and take operations to the next level
