The manufacturer is one of the three largest European heat pump suppliers.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf The heating manufacturer Vaillant has increased its sales significantly in the past year. Compared to 2021, it grew by eleven percent to 3.7 billion euros. For comparison: Competitor Viessmann achieved sales of four billion euros in 2022.
The heating market has grown over the past year. Overall, around five percent more heaters were sold in Germany in 2022 than in the previous year. This growth was primarily driven by heat pumps (plus 53 percent). Sales of gas heaters, on the other hand, fell by eight percent.
Vaillant not only sells heaters in Germany, but throughout Europe. According to its own statements, the manufacturer’s business grew faster than the overall market last year. Vaillant’s sales of heat pumps increased by 75 percent, while sales of gas heating rose by six percent despite a declining gas heating market.
Investments in the heat pump
Like all heating manufacturers, Vaillant is increasingly concentrating on the manufacture of heat pumps. As the company announced in March, it intends to invest up to two billion euros in the heat pump business between 2016 and 2030 – depending on future market developments.
According to Vaillant, it is already one of the three largest heat pump suppliers in Europe. Despite this, the 75 percent growth in sales of heat pumps only resulted in an 11 percent increase in sales for the overall business.
The manufacturer, which, like its competitors, has focused heavily on gas heaters in the past, does not provide any information on how many heaters of which type it has sold. In total, Vaillant has sold 2.5 million heaters and almost a million hot water appliances.
It is also known that the medium-sized company wants to start series production of heat pumps in a new factory in Slovakia in autumn 2023, thereby doubling its own production capacities to more than 500,000 heat pumps per year in the long term.
Although Vaillant’s total turnover of EUR 3.7 billion is slightly below that of Viessmann (EUR 4 billion), Vaillant has significantly more employees. According to the company, the number has increased from 16,000 to 17,000 in the past year. At Viessmann it recently rose to 14,500.
Heating market should continue to grow
Vaillant CEO Norbert Schiedeck said on the figures for the past financial year: “We also expect positive business development for 2023.” It is already becoming apparent that the heating market will continue to grow this year. In Germany, heat pump sales rose by 111 percent in the first quarter of 2023.
After their slump in 2022, fossil-based heating types were also recently on the up again. The number of gas heaters sold rose by 14 percent in the first quarter and that of oil heaters by as much as 100 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
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The background is likely to be a months-long political debate in Germany about the new heating law. This should initially stipulate that from 2024 every newly installed heating system must be operated with 65 percent renewable energies. In many cases, that would have resulted in a ban on new, pure gas and oil heating systems – and in recent months has created an incentive for many people to quickly install a fossil-fuelled heating system.
More: Viessmann may sell heat pump production in the USA.