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Liebherr is an interesting manufacturer, split between two very disparate main products. On the one hand, there’s heavy industrial equipment like the massive Liebherr R 9800 excavator, one of the biggest excavators ever built. On the other, high-end refrigeration appliances. To make sense of what looks like a pretty bizarre dichotomy, it helps to understand the company’s history.
Liebherr is a private, family-owned business run by descendants of its original founder, a German entrepreneur and engineer named Hans Liebherr. It was created in 1949 after Hans developed a mobile crane to assist in Germany’s postwar construction following the devastation of the second World War. It wasn’t until half a decade later, in 1954, that refrigeration joined the portfolio, when Liebherr decided to diversify its offerings by manufacturing fridges and freezers in Ochsenhausen in southern Germany.
These days, Liebherr is a decentralized group of companies under the auspices of Liebherr-International AG out of Bulle, Switzerland. The main appliance business is now called Liebherr-Hausgeräte, or Liebherr Domestic Appliances, and is a product division rather than a fully independent brand. It builds appliances across five different nations, including luxury refrigerators equipped with some pretty cool features.
Liebherr appliances are made around the world
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Liebherr’s fridges and freezers, like the energy efficient C5740IM refrigerator, are constructed across a global manufacturing network. The company says its domestic appliance facilities live in India, Germany, Malaysia, Austria, and Bulgaria, and are managed from Germany by Liebherr-Hausgeräte GmbH. The company continues to operate out of Ochsenhausen, the town where founder Hans Liebherr first launched the appliance wing of the company.
In Austria, Liebherr’s facilities are located in Lienz, a small Alpine town at the meeting point of the Isel and Drava rivers. Its Bulgarian plant is in a little village called Radinovo near the city of Plovdivj. Manufacturing in Malaysia happens in Kluang in the interior of Johor, the southernmost state of Peninsular Malaysia, while its Indian facilities are in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, a major historical and industrial city. As with most major appliance and electronics companies, manufacturing origin can vary by model, product category, and destination market.