Embraco compressor has been regarded as an important part of Whirlpool's upstream and downstream appliance chain. But this year Whirlpool suddenly chose to sell this high-quality asset, indicating that this old American appliance company is now coming from the global market. After being squeezed by peers in China and South Korea, they have been trapped in a confused channel and have to save money in advance.
European and American companies in the “hometown” of modern home appliance market once monopolized the global market. Whirlpool, the United States, which was founded over a hundred years ago, was once the world’s largest white-power company. However, these have become past events and memories. Recently, with Asian home appliances such as China, Japan and South Korea The rise of the enterprise, Whirlpool's home appliance business has been forced to shrink. Now, even its compressor company Embraco Group are sold at a discount to the Japanese company.
A few days ago, Whirlpool Group announced that it agreed to sell its Embraco Group for US$1.08 billion in cash to Nidec Japan. Niederke, a well-known manufacturer of motor products born in Japan, in the global appliance industry, is now expanding its business. Industrial chain formed a new pattern of motor + compressor business.
And Embraco's competitiveness is not weak. It was once the world leader in the hermetic refrigeration compressor market, with an annual output of about 32 million units. Embraco is headquartered in Joinville, Brazil, and in China, Slovakia, Mexico, Italy and other places have factories and offices with a total of 12,000 employees. As early as three years ago, Embraco let Huayi in China squeezed, which was overtaken by the latter to become the world's second largest ice pressure industry.
For the appliance industry, the importance of inverter compressors is self-evident, especially in the refrigerator industry. As one of the pioneers in the field of frequency conversion, Embraco has been exporting energy-saving, silent and intelligent products to the global market since 1998. Controlled as one of the inverter compressor products. Prior to this, Whirlpool was 100% owned by Embraco. That is, Whirlpool included white goods such as air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines, many of which were original manufacturers. Whirlpool appliances have a complete industrial chain and control the 'heart' of the product.
For the acquirer Niederke, it is a group company with nearly 300 subsidiaries around the world, especially in the washing of motors. The air-conditioning and motor industries all play an important role in the global market. Data shows that in the Chinese market, Nederko's sales share of the washing motor market is approximately 7%-10%; Nidec's Shibaura Electric's share of the air-conditioner motor market is approximately 10%, and inverter air conditioner motors account for a higher proportion.
At the China AWE in March of this year, Embraco also innovated the cooling solution to achieve the overall performance improvement of the refrigerator with the 'double cooling' technology. It can be speculated that the acquisition of Embraco by Nederko has further expanded its The business in the field of light commercial refrigerator compressors has enhanced its domestic compressor business capabilities and the industrial layout has been further improved.
Combining the 'Compressor Business with Global First' has become the goal of Niedko. In August of last year, Nederk also successfully acquired the light compressor brand Secop. After this acquisition of Embraco, Nico Deco has more than 15 million annual capacity compressors in China. The total annual production capacity of light commercial compressors will exceed 6 million units.
After the acquisition is completed, it will take a while for dual-integration to be completed. However, Whirlpool's sale of Embraco for US$1.08 billion is itself lower than expected. Many insiders interpreted this as saying that Whirlpool's home appliance business has shrunk in the global market. Make strategic adjustments.
For Chinese household electrical appliance companies that have always liked to acquire, it rarely involves the upstream of the industrial chain. The acquisition of the Nederland Group has a significant impact on the compressor industry, and will also affect the future of the home appliance industry to a certain extent. How do Chinese home appliance companies do? To occupy the right to speak in the development of the home appliance industry, it should also gain some inspiration from this acquisition.