Heat pumps drive Daikin Europe to record sales
10th May 2023
BELGIUM: Strong European demand for heat pumps helped Daikin Europe NV achieve record sales of €5.2bn in the year to March 31, a 20% increase on last year.
Sales of residential heat pumps are said to have grown by over 50%, outperforming the market.
Daikin reports that the “significant” sales growth was achieved despite the ongoing global challenges of continued components shortage, supply chain disruptions, the European energy crisis, high inflation and lower buying power.
“Despite challenging economic headwinds, Daikin Europe’s strong growth in 2022 exceeds the ambitious targets of our five-year strategic Fusion 25 plan. Our low-carbon heating and cooling innovations developed in and for EMEA continue to enable the region’s energy transition,” commented Masatsugu Minaka, Daikin Europe’s chairman
Daikin attributes its increased market share to its recent investments in European production capacity. “With the increasing demand for heat pumps, our supply and manufacturing organisation was able to increase production output beyond initial plans, despite difficult and irregular component sources,” explained Takayuki Kamekawa, Daikin Europe’s vice-president sales. “As a result, we realised more than 150% heat pump heating turnover growth compared to the previous fiscal year.”
The post-covid European commercial market, still showed instability in retail and hospitality industry investments, Daikin says, but its strongest asset proved to be the well-positioned line-up for light commercial applications such as small data centres and warehousing, and good availability of large commercial VRV ranges.
In the refrigeration segment, low demand from food retail chains is said to have had a negative impact on the results of Daikin Europe’s subsidiary AHT.
Investments
Daikin Europe made a number of key investments in 2022, in addition to the acquisition of Italian technical service provider Landi SpA. These included over €90m investments to expand operations in its heat pump factories in Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic and Turkey and an investment of €300m in a new residential heat pump factory in Poland. 2022 also marked the opening of Daikin’s first factory in Saudi Arabia for the production of air handling units and applied air conditioning solutions.
The Daikin Europe group also welcomed over 1,200 new employees in 2022, growing its workforce by approximately 10%. It plans to recruit a further 7,000 people before 2030, nearly doubling its current staffing from 12,800 to 20,000 employees in EMEA.
