BSH Hausgeräte (BSH, Munich / Germany; www.bsh-group.de) intends to expand further into the Polish market. With this in mind, the German electrical appliance group will invest PLN 120m (around EUR 28m) in the former Fagor Mastercook factory in Wroclaw, which manufactures cookers, stoves and ovens. After months of negotiations, BSH in early November 2015 finally signed the agreement to purchase the former subsidiary of Spanish domestic appliance manufacturer Fagor Electrodomesticos (Mondragon; www.fagor.com), which announced bankruptcy around two years ago. The purchase price is PLN 95m combined with the commitment to invest in the production plant in Wroclaw, which has been on ice since the beginning of the insolvency.

BSH expects Poland's output of white goods – most of which are exported – to rise. But on the domestic market, too, demand for electronic and electrical devices is increasing, with particularly good prospects for smartphones and small domestic appliances – according to a report from Germany Trade and Invest (gtai, Berlin / German; www.gtai.de). From January to May 2015, Poland produced around 12m large and small domestic appliances according to CECED Polska (www.cecedpolska.pl), with a record expected for the year as a whole. In terms of white goods alone, some 8.7m appliances came off the production lines in the first five months of last year (up 11%). The export value has increased continuously in the last few years and, according to CECED Polska, rose to PLN 3.9 bn in Q1 2015.

The largest manufacturer of household appliances in Europe with currently 42 plants in 30 countries recently laid the foundation stone for its first dishwasher production line in China. The new plant on the site of the existing facility in Chuzhou (Anhui province) is due to commence production at the beginning of 2018 with a capacity of 600,000 units. In total, BSH intends to invest around EUR 215m in the site near Nanjing in the east of the country over the course of the next five years.

Some of the money will flow into the BSH (Chuzhou) Home Appliance Park to drive the development of new technologies, and primarily to integrate regional Chinese features into the appliances. The future factory will produce, for example, a dishwasher developed specifically for the Chinese market, with baskets for woks, rice bowls, soup dishes and chopsticks.