During the latest edition of CES, recently held in Las Vegas, Gorenje Group participated for the first time, appearing under the auspices of the Hisense Group. The brand central new feature that is already a result of Gorenje’s successful integration into the Hisense Group, is the new ConnectLife platform that will allow communication between connectible products by all Hisense Group companies. At the exhibition, Gorenje Group presented its connectible major domestic appliances made in Slovenia, under its new owner, the Hisense Group. Among them, there are connectible ovens, dishwashers, washing machines and refrigerators that can communicate through the innovative ConnectLife platform both among them and with other Hisense Group appliances and devices. It namely includes advanced digital services and solutions suitable for new connected and non-connected Hisense Group appliances from all product categories. Thus, Gorenje and Hisense presented at the CES tradeshow the first results of combining their experience and integrating the two companies’ know-how, while collaboration on new product development is resulting in an all-around offer of products for the smart home. The ConnectLife platform is also integrated with Gorenje Group’s digital assistants, as well as services and products offered by third-party partners. It is also connected with digital personal assistants such as Alexa, Google, Siri etc. Gorenje will launch the ConnectLife platform and its line of connected appliances in the markets in this year.
Toshiba
Toshiba domestic appliances a money-loser in 2016 is now showing signs of a comeback under Midea Group as it leverages its new Chinese parent’s sales channels across Asia.
The Toshiba appliance business “is an important component in the globalization of Midea. We want to grow it into a world-leading appliance maker,” said Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea.
Toshiba appliances disappeared from Chinese shelves in 2015 due to sluggish sales. They returned a year later via the retail network of Midea, which acquired Toshiba’s appliance business, Toshiba Lifestyle Products & Services.
“This is a popular product that uses Toshiba’s advanced technology,” says a saleswoman at a Midea appliance shop in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Amid the shelves of Midea products stand Toshiba-brand microwaves, of which the most expensive costs 12,999 yuan ($1,922) — around twice the price of its Midea equivalent.
The multifunctional Toshiba microwave can be used to make a variety of dishes, such as employing high-temperature steam to broil fish. “It’s also very durable,” the saleswoman said. “Those who enjoy cooking hold it in high regard.”
Midea is a big presence in the appliance market, generating sales of around 240 billion yuan in fiscal 2017. But its core lineup consists of inexpensive products limited to basic features. The company is working to move upmarket and has positioned the Toshiba brand as its top of the line.
Under Midea, Toshiba Lifestyle is accelerating its overseas expansion. Midea plans to open a new plant in western India as early as 2020 and will locally produce and market such Toshiba-brand products as washing machines and microwave ovens, marking the brand’s return to the market after a 2012 exit. Depending on demand, other items like refrigerators may be added to the mix. Investment of more than $1.8 billion is expected over the next five years.
Toshiba Lifestyle is also cultivating the entire Southeast Asian market, including places like Cambodia and Myanmar. Besides using its own factories in Thailand and China, Toshiba Lifestyle is procuring products from Midea under an original equipment manufacturer arrangement.
In the second half of 2018, Toshiba put more than 30 new items on sale in Thailand, including refrigerators where the freezer is on one side, a type little seen in Japan.
When Toshiba Lifestyle was under Toshiba, it was never more than one division of a larger engineering company. When earnings faltered at the parent, it did not receive sufficient money for product development, falling into a cycle where it became less competitive.
But after it was bought by Midea, Toshiba Lifestyle began receiving enough funds to develop products that met the needs of the marketplace, company executives say. The goal now is to use Midea’s marketing network to increase the portion of overseas sales at Toshiba Lifestyle to 50% from the current level of around 30% by 2020.
Earnings are recovering as Toshiba Lifestyle’s revenue jumped more than 50% from fiscal 2015 to 250 billion yen ($2.3 billion) in calendar 2017. The company probably moved back into the black last year even without restructuring measures like layoffs. Cost-cutting moves such as production at Midea’s Chinese plants and joint parts procurement seem to have had a positive impact.
Other Japanese brands revived under Chinese parents include the white goods business of Sanyo Electric, which returned to profitability several years after being sold to Haier Group in 2012.
Grundig FRIDGE HAS A NOSE FOR MEAT QUALITY.
FRESHMETER
NOW YOUR FRIDGE HAS A NOSE FOR MEAT QUALITY.
As a valuable commodity with a variable shelf life, raw meat needs special attention. For your own wellbeing, our FreshMeter keeps an eye on your fresh meat products. The sensor integrated into a special meat compartment responds to gas emissions and indicates the freshness of stored meat by means of a traffic light display on the fridge: green means everything is fine, yellow indicates the meat should be used, and red shows that it should not be eaten.
Grundig’s Gourmet Chef Smart Oven
Grundig’s Gourmet Chef Smart Oven is equipped with advanced connected technologies and sensors allowing users to precisely control the temperature of their food as it cooks to ensure the best results. This includes a moisture and oxygen sensor, a temperature control sensor and BLDC motor, an integrated camera and a multipoint meat probe. The Gourmet Chef oven also features a 7” Touch TFT Display that lets users control these in-oven smart functions, allowing for easy monitoring and adjustments to the cooking process.
In addition to these smart functions, Grundig’s Steam Assist technology allows users to easily cook poultry, meat and fish to the perfect level of tenderness, as well as bread and pastries to rival an artisan bakery. The secret ingredient is multiple bursts of steam released throughout the cooking cycle at predetermined times based on the selected automatic cooking programme. This ensures that baked goods retain up to 7% more moisture, and develop a rise 14% higher than they would in a traditional oven, as well as a crisp and shiny crust. Full steam cooking is also an ideal cooking method for users looking to maintain a healthy diet, as it removes the need to cook using oil. This cooking process also allows the food to retain a higher quantity of vitamins and minerals. The Gourmet Chef Smart Oven offers full steam and combination steam cooking programmes, and can also be used as a conventional oven.
The intuitive innovation doesn’t stop there. Dealing with the aftermath of a spitting joint of meat is no longer a problem thanks to Grundig’s advanced automatic self-cleaning with water, which cleans the whole oven at the touch of a button. And to ensure that users’ cleaning practices remain sustainable, quick cleaning functions start at off-peak electricity hours
Sharp Turns Home Cooks into Culinary Champions with Dynamic Oven Series
Whatever the size of your kitchen, whatever the scope of your culinary know-how, you can cook like a champion with Sharp 45cm-60cm built-in ovens. Bringing some serious cooking style to your everyday kitchen experience, this range will put an end to your daily mealtime slog. No more anxiety, no more cooking set-backs. Designed with speciality functions as well as mealtime trouble-shooter features, Sharp ovens will clear the way to culinary success.
Steam-assisted Oven with Air Curtain
Designed to fulfil great culinary ambition, this extra-large 75-litre capacity oven promises to raise your game in the kitchen. Perfectly grilling and browning your food, it comes with 10 cooking functions enabling you to find exactly the right cooking conditions for every dish.
Any time you think you might need a little extra help, you can always count on Sharp oven’s steam-assisted power. If your meat looks in danger of becoming a little tough, or your vegetables a little dried out, then simply add a puff of steam with the manual steam option. One quick steam injection can change the course of your cooking, ensuring mouth-wateringly delicious results every time. steam-assisted functionality is also great for baking. Rather than fall flat or dry up, your pastries will rise, and anything you cook will stay crispy on the outside and mouth-wateringly juicy on the inside. Best of all, thanks to the steam, your cooking is likely to be more nutritious, as more of your dish’s vitamins and nutrients can be preserved with this cooking method.
When the pressure is on, you can always cheat your way to culinary success. With 150 bang-on-trend autocooking recipes, including 20 that are for steam-assisted cooking, this oven is always there to support you, automatically setting the ideal programme, temperature and cooking duration for every dish you can imagine.
Whatever you decide to make, you’ll aways stay cool thanks to the oven’s Air Curtain feature. Using an air stream, Air Curtain prevents any hot air from escaping the inside of the cavity whenever the oven door is opened.
For the dreaded post-meal oven clean, you can also count on more support. The oven’s VapClean+ function uses steam to dislodge grease and grime, leaving you nothing to do but gently wipe clean the inside of the oven.
45cm Compact Series: Small but Mighty
Discover your inner masterchef with our dynamic compact series. Comprising of a sleek 45cm oven and matching warming drawer, this range is designed to take you to new culinary heights. Small but mighty, both the oven and the warming drawer are the ideal fit for even tight kitchen spaces, enabling you to install both products as part of a drop down wall formation.
Designed with one of the largest capacities for a 45cm model, our 50-litre oven not only enables you to cook, grill and brown your food, but also to ensure extra special cooking results, even when you might have started to over-heat your dish a little. Thanks to its steam-assisted power, it not only gives you the power to bake more professionally, but also to refresh your dish with a quick puff of steam during the cooking process.
Bringing you more culinary adventure, it also comes with 20 autocooking functions and the VapClean+ function to take care of the post-meal oven clean-up.
Matching Warming Drawer
So much more than just a place to keep your dishes warm,Sharp matching warming drawer doubles up as an additional cooking support, offering a place for you to defrost food, warm up soups and pastries, and prove bread.
Thanks to its gentle push door mechanic, you can also open and close it without having to worry that the motion will cause any stored dishes to spill or capsize.
The PerFector 60cm Oven
Meet the PerFector, a game-changing oven that will correct and perfect your dishes. Why waste time putting on your oven gloves and re-positioning your oven tray when, simply by touching a button, you can automatically move your dish to one of five shelf levels? Compensating for any minor cooking oversights, this meal-time hero is made to keep your dish on track. If you find yourself short on cooking time, move your tray from the bottom to nearer the top of the oven to speed up the heating process and ensure a perfectly browned surface for your dish. If your food is beginning to look a little too crisp on top, then simply move it down a level or two for more gentle heating.
Sharp supermodel also comes with a whole host of other features, offering a series of 10 programmes, which include a pizza function for baking as well as a grill and turnspit cycle to make the perfect roast. For the post-meal oven clean, you can count on PerFector’s VapClean function, which dislodges and breaks down the toughest grease and grime using the steam generated from a water-filled tray.
AirStream Oven
Break all culinary rules and discover multi-dish cooking. Saving you more time in the kitchen, AirStream is the first ever oven to let you cook dishes across five shelf levels. In just one cooking session, you can make up to 5 pizzas or 100 cupcakes. What’s more, you can also be sure of perfectly even cooking results. Thanks to its double-fan structure and additional side air vents, this oven is capable of distributing hot air evenly, whatever the shelf level, whatever the shelf position.
With AirStream, you can also cater to individual dish requests, helping to keep the whole family happy at mealtimes. Instead of having to run separate cooking cycles for each requested meal, you’re free to cook 3 entirely different dishes together without ever having to worry about any cross-contamination of flavour or odours.
European Sales and Marketing Director, Alberico Lissoni, comments, “Designed for real life, our ovens support you through the good times and the bad, offering quick fix remedies for minor cooking mishaps. For us, cooking should be a passion for everyday life, giving cooks of all abilities more opportunity to experiment with recipes and to concoct dishes, all without having to worry about tweaking temperature settings, or moving the oven tray
Ecovacs
Ecovacs has presented its first Deebot controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) in CES 2019. It is the Deebot OZMO 960 model. Using the new technology AIVI (Artificial Intelligence and Visual Interpretation), the robot vacuum cleaner not only recognizes its environment to create a plan cleaning, but also detects many obstacles, such as cables or socks, and can avoid them efficiently. So far, AIVI can recognize around 500 objects and is constantly learning new things. The robot does not yet have a release date.
Ecovacs has also presented Smart Home technologies and the award-winning Winbot X, the first wireless window cleaning robot developed by the company, designed for people who want to enjoy a better view from their windows without having to clean themselves.
In addition to these two products, Ecovacs has also shown the functionality of its most important technologies at CES: the Smart Navi 3.0 map and navigation system, and the Ecovacs OZMO cleaning system.
Teka
In order to publicize the launch of new products, Teka has just presented two new announcements. Specifically, the new generation of induction plates of the iKnob series, and the launch in Spain of its new French Door Gourmet refrigerator.
Under the slogan “Feel the power of iKnob” Teka has presented the new series of iKnob induction hobs, which has an innovative removable control, which provides a great improvement in the usability of the board, to be able to control the power and Plate time intuitively with just one knob.
One of the major novelties in its design is that its screen printing, which is usually engraved, in this case, is LED, so it is not visible when the plate is off, which facilitates a harmonization of the countertop with the rest of the design from the kitchen.
For its part, the new Teka refrigerator, French Door Gourmet, has been presented with the slogan “Open the door to wellness”. With an exclusive design with attention to detail, this appliance has a technology that will exceed all the expectations of the users. Through its distribution of two doors in the refrigerator and two large drawers as a freezer, allow a capacity of almost 540 liters, which is 30% more capacity compared to the market average.
The Gourmet Box has a separate refrigerator circuit, which allows to control the temperature independently. Likewise, this new Teka product incorporates the Inventer engine, which places this refrigerator in a range of excellent performance and efficiency with an A ++ energy classification, which means lower consumption, quieter and greater energy savings.
According to Francisco López, vice president of Marketing for Grupo Teka, he stressed that cooking for Teka is much more than the place where food is prepared. “It’s the place where you laugh, you dream, you share, you talk, you make decisions, you give news, you make life plans and, ultimately, where you cook your life . ” And he adds that for all this, Teka designs and manufactures household appliances that provide solutions and real innovations to kitchen, that adapt to the lifestyle of the users and that are in harmony with your home.
“We work every day to understand your needs and provide new solutions that help you discover new possibilities in the kitchen”
Brava fastest oven in the world
Brava, is more about the food than the controls. It will demonstrate a new smart countertop oven at CES that it claims “is the fastest oven in the world and cooks food twice as fast as your traditional oven”, with the ability to go from 0°C to 260°C instantly. The Brava Oven, it says, “is shaping the next era of in-home cooking through the power of its ground-breaking, patented technology that uses infrared light as an energy source to make delicious, homemade food”
Whirlpool show of at CES
Whirlpool Corporation will once again be present at CES in Las Vegas from 8 until January 11, 2019. A new range of ovens connected with augmented reality that will allow you to choose recipes based on the available ingredients and see the state of cooking without opening the oven thanks to augmented reality ; and a washer dryer with improved connectivity thanks to the new Whirlpool application.
Connected Hub Ovens
The new range of intelligent kitchen appliances includes a total of 28 cooking appliances with state-of-the-art technology such as the advanced digital kitchen platform from Yummly, owned by Whirlpool. Among its functions, stands out the technology of recognition of ingredients of this platform thanks to the augmented reality, which allows to detect ingredients and recommend recipes based on them, as well as preferences, tastes and cooking level of users. This improved platform became operational in December 2018 and in 2019 it will incorporate the Yummly® Meal Planning, with personalized weekly meal plans based on users’ dietary preferences, their schedule, number of meals and portions, as well as the ingredients available and restaurants for special occasions.
The new range of Connected Hub wall ovens is able to inform those families that need it most of the optimal cooking experience (from which grid to use what cooking cycle to select), in order to make sure that they are making the most of it your appliance
Also, the augmented reality allows to avoid the inevitable losses of heat and energy that occur when reviewing the state of cooking by opening the oven door, thanks to an internal vision system and an external zoom that allows to do it without having to open.
Wash in fewer steps Whirlpool will present at CES two models of front-loading washer-dryer connected to simplify the washing steps. Through the next integrations with Wear OS by Google, a new custom control from anywhere through Google Assistant, Alexa-enabled devices and the Whirlpool® application, Whirlpool® Smart Laundry devices will preview new features in this CES 2019.
For example, the new application includes a Spotting Guide that allows families to quickly identify how to deal with different spots: once the user enters the application with the type of stain and fabric, the guide automatically sends the recommendations to the washing machine and Suggested configurations to obtain the best result. It also allows up to 30 personalized wash cycles to be stored in the application and to manage the laundry from anywhere, even in movement, being able to order the start of the washing machine or the transfer of clothes.
In addition to the integration of Apple Watch, in 2019 Whirlpool’s connected washing machines will also be compatible with Google’s Wear operating system, in order to communicate remotely with these devices. In addition, the Whirlpool application will continue to send alert notifications to users’ mobiles and will continue its integration with the Amazon Dash replenishment system, which automatically arranges the purchase of detergent when it is running low.
Beyond the application, these intelligent washing appliances incorporate in the device itself intuitive shortcuts, such as the innovative Load & Go function, which allows to store up to 40 loads of detergent in the washing machine itself, which automatically dispenses the correct dose according to the size and characteristics of each load.
Fisher & paykel UK on the move
Fisher & Paykel UK is moving its offices to larger premises in Wavendon, Milton Keynes on January 7.
Fisher & Paykel has been designing products since 1934 and has grown into a global company operating in 50 countries and manufacturing in Thailand, Mexico, China and Italy.
WHITEGOODSNOW 