GERMANY/PORTUGAL: Bosch has announced that it will invest around €100m in its Portuguese heat pump plant.
The German manufacturer plans to build new laboratories, two production buildings, and additional heat-pump production lines at the plant in Aveiro, south of Porto. The investment is also expected to create several hundred new jobs over the medium term.
Alongside Eibelshausen in Germany and Tranås in Sweden, Bosch sees Aveiro an an important location in the European development and production network for heat pumps. Bosch will invest a total of more than €1bn in expanding this network by the end of the decade.
Claiming that Bosch was aiming for a leading position in the international heat-pump market, Christian Fischer, the deputy chairman of the Bosch board of management, said: “We’re investing now in developing and manufacturing our heat pumps to ensure we can ramp up production at the required rate.”
The Bosch Home Comfort Group has been developing and producing technologies for water heating in Aveiro since 1988 when it acquired Portuguese heating equipment company Vulcano Luso Ibérica.
Last year, Bosch announced a a €12m investment in the factory to expand heat pump production from its previous single production line.
The location is also home to the development of heat pumps for Southern Europe. In addition, the Aveiro plant will manufacture the outdoor units and wall-mounted indoor units for the next-generation, Compress 5800i AW and Compress 6800i AW propane heat pumps.
The Bosch Home Comfort Group launched its first heat pump back in the 1970s. Following the acquisition of the Swedish heat-pump manufacturer IVT in 2006, the company has continued to develop not only the products but also the heat-pump ecosystem.
