Heat pumps are a key component of climate-neutral buildings. For this reason, Bosch is consistently pursuing its long-term strategy and investing in the ramp-up of its development and production capacity for heat pumps. Now, some 100 million euros are going to its Portuguese location in Aveiro, south of Porto, by 2026.
The company plans to build new laboratories, two production buildings, and additional heat-pump production lines. This should also create several hundred new jobs there over the medium term. Alongside Eibelshausen in Germany and TranĂĄs in Sweden, Aveiro is an important location in the European development and production network for heat pumps. Bosch will invest a total of more than one billion euros in expanding this network by the end of the decade.
Bosch heat pumps: “made in Europe”
The Bosch Home Comfort Group relies on a diversified portfolio to achieve climate targets in the building sector. Heat pumps and heat-pump hybrids are an essential element in decarbonizing the more than 200 million buildings located in Europe alone.
The Bosch Home Comfort Group has been developing and producing technologies for water heating in Aveiro for many years. The location is also home to the development of heat pumps for Southern Europe. In addition, the Aveiro plant will manufacture the outdoor units and wall-mounted indoor units for the next-generation, particularly quiet Compress 5800i AW and Compress 6800i AW heat pumps, which use the eco-friendly refrigerant propane. Experience gained in producing wall-mounted water heaters can feed into this. The Compress 5800i AW and Compress 6800i AW were developed jointly by various teams from Wernau (Germany) and Aveiro and produced in a manufacturing network with Aveiro, Eibelshausen, and TranĂĄs.
At the beginning of the year, a production line for the indoor unit of the next-generation heat pumps was started up in Eibelshausen. What sets the new line apart is that the storage tanks are inserted into the heat pump’s indoor unit before it leaves the plant; previously, this was handled by specialist dealers. This significantly reduces the installation time required by the end user, while increasing system robustness and shortening transport routes. The new line benefits from the Eibelshausen plant’s decades of experience in producing hot-water tanks.
TranĂĄs, as a long-standing Swedish heat-pump location, manufactures part of the outdoor units, drawing on its many years of experience with the technology. This location has been developing and manufacturing heat pumps for the Bosch Home Comfort Group since 2006. Its development focus is on products for the Northern European market.
Heating systems are moving from the basement to the front yard
The next-generation Compress 5800i AW and Compress 6800i AW heat pumps were developed in a user-experience approach together with specialists from the heating trade. The development focus was on design, functionality, and sound optimization.
“Thanks to their horizontal format, the heat pumps can be placed in various positions, meaning, for example, that they integrate into the visuals of a yard or garden in an appealing way. All these characteristics play a crucial role in a customer’s decision to make a purchase,” adds Tino Hirsch, head of sales at Bosch Home Comfort in Germany.
Comprehensive range of services for the heating trade
The Bosch Home Comfort Group launched its first heat pump back in the 1970s. After it acquired the Swedish heat-pump manufacturer IVT in 2006, the company has continued to develop not only the products but also the heat-pump ecosystem, with an eye to making the equipment quick and easy for service engineers to install and simple for end users to operate. For example, thanks to their improved design, the next-generation heat pumps take up only 0.36 square meters of space.
In addition, the Bosch Home Comfort Group and its brands support heating specialists to make their everyday work more efficient. One way is through the new foundation service, which offers heating professionals the option of ordering a precisely fitted foundation for the outdoor units of air-source heat pumps, thus outsourcing this non-technical activity. In cooperation with Bosch Power Tools, the Bosch Home Comfort brand offers tradespeople OfficeOn software to further increase their efficiency in planning, quoting, and invoicing and to help them with appointment coordination and timesheets.
