Viessmann achieved record sales last year – also because of the heat pump boom.
(Photo: Viessmann)
Dusseldorf Viessmann posted record sales: the heating and air conditioning technology provider generated four billion euros in 2022, as the company announced on Wednesday morning. That is 19 percent more than in the previous year, when it was 3.4 billion euros. As early as 2021, Viessmann achieved a sales increase of 21 percent. The company did not provide any information on the development of profits.
The 105-year-old family company initiated the transformation towards technologies suitable for the energy transition in the building sector early on. However, Viessmann initially relied on hydrogen, since gas heating systems and networks can sometimes continue to be used for this energy source. Viessmann wanted to retain part of the gas heating production for Germany.
As a result of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the resulting sharp rise in gas prices, the industry has accelerated the switch to electricity-driven heat pumps.
Heat pumps: Viessmann produces over 200,000 units
When asked by the Handelsblatt, Viessmann said the company had increased the production of heat pumps by 70 percent in 2022 compared to the previous year – i.e. to over 200,000. According to Viessmann, it produced 120,000 heat pumps in 2021, but only around half of them in Germany.
In 2022, the company also increased the number of employees by 1,500 to 14,500 and doubled the number of employees in the production of heat pumps.
Last May, the CEO of the Viessmann Group, Max Viessmann, had already announced that he would invest one billion euros in green air conditioning solutions and, above all, in heat pumps. The company is now building a new heat pump factory in Poland.
The number of heat pumps is expected to rise to six million by 2030
Because the goals of the federal government are ambitious. Politics, business and consumers should become less dependent on gas. In addition, the building sector causes around 30 percent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions; in Germany, the sector missed its climate target by two million tons of CO2.
Last August, Chancellor Olaf Scholz screwed the last screw into a heat pump under the guidance of a Viessmann employee.
(Photo: dpa)
In order to change that, the Federal Ministry of Economics wants to have a total of six million heat pumps in Germany by 2030 and is increasingly promoting the installation of the systems. Because the heaters are operated with electricity that can be generated from renewable energies. According to the Federal Association of Heat Pumps, 235,000 heat pumps were installed nationwide in 2022, and the number is just over one million. At least 500,000 new heat pumps are to be added each year in the future.
Heat pumps: Manufacturers and craftsmen have to adapt quickly
But that should only be possible if craftsmen in Germany almost exclusively install heat pumps instead of gas heating in the future. From 2024, a rule will apply according to which every newly installed heating system in Germany must be supplied with at least two thirds from renewable energies. Pure gas or oil heating systems will probably no longer be allowed to be installed.
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However, like Viessmann, many German heating manufacturers relied primarily on gas heating systems until last year. This can be seen in the inventory: in 2021, around 50 percent of apartments in Germany were still heated with gas and another 25 percent with oil. Heat pumps accounted for less than three percent of heating systems.
The manufacturers must therefore quickly convert their production for the German market: In 2022, sales of electricity-powered heaters grew by a total of 53 percent compared to the previous year, as shown by figures from the Federal Association of Heat Pumps and the Federal Association of the German Heating Industry.
Accordingly, other heating contractors in Germany are also fully committed to electricity-driven heating systems. The Vice President of Bosch, Christian Fischer, said in an interview with the Handelsblatt that Bosch is also benefiting from the rapid development in the heating market, in the areas of building and thermal technology Bosch is growing in double digits. Fischer also spoke of a new, additional heat pump production at the Bosch plant in Eibelshausen. “We are thus expanding our production network in Europe and contributing to the energy transition,” said Fischer. “We invest ‘whatever it takes’.”
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