I posted about this earlier, I'm not happy about it at all. Now we only have one American owned mainstream appliance manufacturer, and three total mainstream companies manufacturing in the US. About a decade ago, GE led the way in outsourcing to Mexico and China. They had serious quality issues with their fridges and laundry. Their cooking products were always excellent. Their dishwashers were well made, but only average performers. But then in 2011 they completely redesigned their heat pump water heaters and moved production from China to the US. In 2012 they resigned their bottom mount fridges and moved production from Mexico to the US, and made a huge investment in their existing US dishwasher factory to built a new line that used less outsourced parts and cleaned much, much better. In 2013 they came out with a completely new front load washer design and moved production from China to the US, came out with a completely new wall oven design, pouring tons of money into that factory in the process, and came out with a brand new Monogram bottom freezer fridge, moving production from Slovenia to the US. They also pumped quite a bit of money into their existing American top freezer factory during these years.

Electrolux closed a Michigan SxS fridge plant in 2006, an Iowa laundry factory in 2011. All the work went to Mexico. They did recently move high end cooking production from Canada to the US, but there was no real innovation or attempt to improve quality associated with that move, they were just trying to pay lower wages. I'm sure the only reason it didn't go to Mexico was because they were sick of people canceling their orders on fridges because the shipments were held up by cartels.

There is far too much badge engineering going on in the appliance industry today (yes, I'm talking about you, Whirlpool) and not enough real innovation. In fact most of the interesting new products I'm seeing are coming from the niche high end manufacturers, whose offerings the average consumer could care less about.

If GE spent that much investing in the business it's hard to understand why they sold it. By the way, I loved the design of the GE profile fridge and the temperature control was excellent, but self destructing in a few years was not acceptable, The first one was covered under the old 5 year warranty. The one they replaced it with only had a one year warranty and it failed in year three.

Blocked by the DOJ: General Electric Calls Off Sale of Appliance Unit to Electrolux

Unfortunately, all these products are nothing more than brand names. At one time, your grandma could buy a product by brand name. Not any more. Electrolux (used to be vacuums), Frigidaire a General Motors company, Whirlpool making it' own components - all gone.

Probably major components are all outsourced to China. It doesn't matter who owns whom.

"General Electric has announced plans to terminate the $3.3bn (£2.2bn) deal to sell its appliances unit to Swedish manufacturer Electrolux." Electrolux would have controlled 40% of the US market if the deal had gone through.

"This deal was bad for the millions of consumers who buy cooking appliances every year. Electrolux and General Electric could not overcome that reality at trial," said deputy assistant attorney general David Gelfand of the Justice Department's anti-trust division."

You can read the entire article on BBC under "business"

Inga

Good, I'm glad to see this fell through. I'm not sure why the DOJ was so obsessed with cooking appliances in particular, but fine by me. We need more competition in the mainstream appliance market, not less. Also I like the recent direction GE seems to be trying to take with the appliances biz, with more USA made products and more innovation (though the practicality of some of those innovations can be debated, like the K-cup fridge).

GE Gets Bids From Chinese Firms Midea, Haier for Appliances Unit