Hefei, Anhui – Whirlpool China is to sell a portion of its idle refrigerator facilities to the appliance group’s India arm, pending shareholders’ approval.
Such assets are valued at CNY 11m ($1.6m), a majority of which is from the China unit’s 4m unit/year high-end energy saving refrigerator project terminated this January, said the company’s announcement.
‘China’s home appliance market has changed greatly over the past few years with increasingly severe competition, and the company has failed to make any breakthrough in its refrigerator sales,’ said the announcement.
The group’s India subsidiary, headquartered in Pune, Maharashtra, has been supercharging it growth. In fiscal year 2017-18 it reported INR 50.7bn ($696 m) revenue, up 14% from a year earlier; profit before tax rose by 16% to INR 5.4bn. Refrigerators contributed to 57% of the Indian firm’s total turnover.
India is also one of the world’s fastest growing appliance market compared to China’s stagnancy. Currently only 29% of India’s households own a refrigerator and its market size is expected to shoot up from $3bn in 2017 to $5.3bn in 2022.
