From General Electric and Mabe to Haier
GE Appliances was a division of General Electric (GE) until June 2016, when GE Appliances was sold to China’s Qingdao Haier Co, Ltd (Haier).
In 2010, GE Appliances began a $150 million investment in its Louisville, Kentucky, facility (Appliance Park) to produce large residential washing machines (LRWs) top- and front-loading in the United States.
Then, in 2012, GE Appliances began producing a broader range of top-loading LRWs at Appliance Park, where it previously only produced top-loading LRWs with a capacity of less than 3.7 cubic feet.
According to information from the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC), GE Appliances began in 2013 to manufacture lightweight front-loading dishwashers at Appliance Park.
GE has been in the process of a multi-year restructuring in which the company has sought to focus on its core industrial businesses and thus reduce the number of its consumer and financial business segments.
As part of this restructuring, in September 2014, GE announced that it was selling its home appliance division to AB Electrolux of Stockholm, Sweden.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to stop the merger in July 2015, arguing that it would lead to less competition and higher prices for appliance buyers.
General Electric
On December 7, 2015, GE announced that it had terminated its agreement to sell its appliance division to Electrolux and would now pursue other options to sell the division.
Then, on January 15, 2016, GE announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell its appliance division to Haier.
On June 6, 2016, GE announced that it had completed the sale of its appliance division, GE Appliances, to Haier for $5.6 billion.
The deal included the 48.4% stake GE Appliances owns in Mabe, a Mexican appliance company that manufactures washing machines.
In October 2018, Haier announced that it would invest $200 million to expand GE Appliances’ washing machine and dishwasher operations in Appliance Park.
Thus, GE Appliances is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Haier.
Haier Group is a large multinational electronics and home appliance manufacturer and distributor headquartered in Qingdao, China.
In 2017, Haier announced that it would expand its production of washing machines in China with the construction of a plant in Hefei, capital of Anhui province in eastern China, with the capacity to produce three million units annually.
Finally, in 2019, Haier opened a plant in Naberezhnye Chelny, Russia, with capacity to produce 500,000 units annually of «small» residential washing machines.
Mabe was founded in 1946 by Basque immigrants as a small lamp base workshop. It was later transformed by the Berrondo family into a Mexican multinational appliance manufacturer.
