Zanussi (company)

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Logo of the Zanussi company

Zanussi is an Italian manufacturer of electrical household appliances. Zanussi has belonged to the Swedish Electrolux group since 1984 and is used by him as a brand for the group's lower price segment.

history

Since 1858 , the company can be traced back as a manufacturer of terracotta stoves under the Becchi brand . Wash troughs and irons were added in the late 1920s .

In 1945 Zanussi had 18 employees and was involved in the construction of wood and coal stoves and stoves. In 1946 , the old owner of the family business died and his son Lino, who had left school early at the age of 17, took over the company as Managing Director. Just five years later, Zanussi was also producing butane gas stoves . In 1954 , the production of refrigerators was added in order to keep the factory busy during the summer months.

The next step, the production of washing machines , was obvious from today's perspective, but it almost led the company to the brink of ruin. In the second half of the 1960s , Zanussi began producing semi-automatic washing machines with double drums, which, due to their appearance, were already outdated when they came on the market. Production was stopped after just 5,000 pieces. Just two years later, he had many parts manufactured by Fiat under license from the US manufacturer Westinghouse . Since the washing machine was way too big and didn't have a built-in heating element, it was another flop.

But Lino and his brother Guido Zanussi, who worked as sales manager, were not discouraged, but tried again successfully to bring their own product onto the market. Zanussi was successful. In the early 1970s the company already had 5,300 employees and dominated the Italian market under the brand names Rex and Naoni . In addition to the company headquarters in Pordenone near Venice , other production sites were built in Italy, where 500,000 refrigerators, 230,000 washing machines, 250,000 ovens and 50,000 televisions were manufactured annually.

End of 1974 which was Pong - Video game console Zanussi Ping-O-Tronic and until 1983 under house brand Zanussi SELECO sold. In 1977 the successor console Zanussi Play-O-Tronic was released.

Zanussi created a largely integrated production chain in which production tools, such as electric welding of the refrigerator housing, were also designed by themselves. Zanussi was one of the first Italian manufacturers to introduce electrostatic painting. Many components, including the plastic parts, forged products, electric motors and transformers came from our own production. Compressors for refrigerators were produced in our own factory in Fürstenfeld , Austria .

In the Madrid area , Zanussi ventured his first expansion into a market outside Italy. After the collapse of Rolls Razor and Duomatic in Great Britain, Zanussi also conquered the market there. Zanussi later went into production for a German company that sold white goods under his brand name. The Quelle AG drove home appliances under its own name in Germany, including Zanussi components supplied. Zanussi expanded into the rest of the European Community , Africa and Asia. Zanussi stayed away from the hotly contested North American market.

In the late 1980s , Zanussi got deep into the red with the production of brown goods, i.e. consumer electronics, which Zanussi had taken over from AEG-Telefunken , like many other competitors. In order to save the production of color televisions in Italy, the state-owned Italian holding REL acquired a 49% stake in the Zanussi company Sèleco. The Olivetti subsidiary Merloni from Fabriano also took a 5% stake. When Zanussi got into a sales crisis in the 1980s with a market share of 22% in Italy and the holding company from the Friuli region of Friuli , which was already involved, signaled that it no longer wanted to participate in further capital increases, Electrolux , which belongs to the Swedish Wallenberg Group , rose Group joined the former family business. The Electrolux group had already established itself through significant company acquisitions in the USA ( Tappan , White Consolidated Inc., to which the refrigerator subsidiary Frigidaire , Kelvinator etc. belong, Roper, Poulan / Weed Eater etc.), in Sweden (Graenges, Gotthard Nilsson), in Great Britain (Thorn-EMI) and Germany (Juno, Zanker, Progress, AEG-Hausgeräte etc.) developed into one of the world's leading manufacturers of household electrical appliances. After a capital increase in 1986, the Zanussi family left the company for good.

In addition to the loss of independence, the Electrolux era at Zanussi is characterized by ongoing restructuring efforts combined with massive staff cuts, outsourcing of component production, the sale or shutdown of production sites, a reduction in the model range and the expansion of the Zanussi brand across Europe.

The commercial kitchen appliances have been sold in Germany by the trading company "NordCap" since 2007. As these devices cover the entry-level segment, Electrolux Professional does not provide support .

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