Stiebel Eltron 🇩🇪

Stiebel Eltron is the German hot water company and, since the seventies, one of the European pioneers of the heat pump. Dr. Theodor Stiebel founded it on May 5, 1924 in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg with 20,000 marks borrowed from his uncles and a patent: the first immersion coil heater, which he presented at the Leipzig fair that year. In 1927 it opened a branch in London and in 1938 it had 35 German patents and 12 foreign ones. The bombings destroyed the Berlin factory in 1943 and the company moved to Holzminden, in Lower Saxony, where it remains.

After the war, instant water heaters and boilers returned, and in 1969 night accumulators and electric heating appeared. The 1973 oil crisis pushed the company toward efficiency: in 1976 it began manufacturing heat pumps, in 1977 solar collectors, and in 1979 heat pumps for domestic hot water. In 1986 it bought Hydrotherm (boilers) and in 2002 the Electrolux Haustechnik division with the AEG brand. Owned by the Stiebel family through a trust, it billed 941 million euros in 2024 with about 5,000 employees, 2,090 of them in Holzminden, and announced in 2023 investments of 450 million to multiply its heat‑pump production. Its role in classic air conditioning is marginal: it is, rather, the brand that taught Europe that a heat pump can also cool.

Pending verification

It has not been documented whether Stiebel Eltron manufactured its own air conditioners (window or split) or since when it has been selling in Spain; the German Wikipedia does not list Spain among its subsidiaries.

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