Consul 🇧🇷

Consul was born on July 15, 1950 in Joinville, in the state of Santa Catarina, founded by Guilherme (Wilhelm) Holderegger and Rodolfo (Rudolf) Stutzer in a 680 m² warehouse. Its first product was the Q‑300 refrigerator, kerosene‑powered and with rounded lines, which also introduced the now universal layout of freezer below and fridge above; in the fifties the Consul Junior arrived, “the father of minibars,” and in the sixties the seal mascot and refrigerators with polyurethane insulation.

In the seventies Consul began manufacturing window air conditioners, at that time the only ones produced in the country, and its units became the standard for the Brazilian middle‑class home, as popular as its refrigerators. In 1994 Consul merged with Brastemp and Indústrias Semeraro to form Multibrás, the Brasmotor group’s response to the flood of imports; in 1997 Whirlpool bought 27 % and took control of Brasmotor, in 2000 it reached 95 % and in 2006 merged Multibrás with Embraco, the compressor manufacturer born in the same Joinville environment, to create Whirlpool S.A. (about 18,000 employees). Embraco was sold in 2018. Today Consul remains Whirlpool’s entry‑level brand in Brazil, with refrigerators, washing machines and a wide range of split and inverter air conditioners.

Pending verification

It has not been possible to pinpoint precisely the first Consul air conditioner or confirm which plant they were manufactured in; the claim that they were “the only ones produced in the country” comes from the Portuguese Wikipedia.

History machine-translated from Spanish. Can you improve it? Write to us.