Electrolux 🇸🇪

Electrolux is the Swedish appliance giant and, through its acquisitions, owner of two names closely linked to classic cooling: Frigidaire and Zanussi. The company was founded in 1919 from the merger of Elektromekaniska (founded in Stockholm in 1910 by Sven Carlstedt) with the lamp manufacturer Lux, orchestrated by salesman Axel Wenner‑Gren, who became the majority shareholder. In 1925 it launched its first refrigerator, model D, an absorption unit based on the patent of students Platen and Munters, and from there built a multinational of vacuum cleaners, washing machines and refrigerators.

In the eighties it grew through acquisitions. On December 14, 1984 it acquired 49 % of Zanussi, the largest Italian manufacturer, which was sinking under debt, and reached 100 % in 1994 for 209 billion lira; Zanussi had had a Spanish presence since 1965 through Ibelsa, the Madrid joint venture with Grupo Fierro, and its founder Lino Zanussi had died in 1968 in an air accident while flying precisely to Spain. In 1986 it paid 742 million dollars for the American White Consolidated Industries, and with it took Frigidaire, the brand that General Motors had sold in 1979 for 120 million. In 1994 it bought AEG and in 2002 sold its German heating division (Electrolux Haustechnik) to Stiebel Eltron.

Frigidaire, born in 1918 in Fort Wayne (Indiana) as Guardian Frigerator from the first autonomous refrigerator of 1916, was for sixty years a division of General Motors and one of the great American brands of window air conditioners; a Frigidaire unit remains installed in the Churchill War Rooms in London. Today, headquartered in Charlotte (North Carolina), it manufactures refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers and stoves for the North American market for Electrolux, and it continues to be one of the classic names of window air conditioners in the United States. Electrolux is the second largest worldwide appliance manufacturer by units, with 41,000 employees and a turnover of 134,900 million Swedish crowns in 2022.

Pending verification

The first Frigidaire air conditioner could not be dated (it is usually cited as 1929-1932) nor could a distinct history of Electrolux or Zanussi in air conditioning be documented; Zanussi is not listed as a climate control manufacturer.

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