Brands
Rob,
There used to be two Merloni companies. One is now the Indesit company (former known as Merloni Elettrodomestici) that owns Indesit, Ariston, Creda and Hotpoint. The other Merloni company called Antonio Merloni owns Servis as it's called in the UK. In other countries these machines are sold under different names, like Edy in the Netherlands, EBD in Germany, Ardo in Italy, etc. etc. Antonio Merloni also owns Asko. Asko machines are sold in the UK under the Maytag label (interesting to see how long that will last) and as Cylinda in Skandinavia.
In the above photos you might see a similarity between Electrolux and Zanussi but they were really different machines still. AEG was much later taken over by Electrolux, a while after AEG had sold it's appliance branch to Daimler Benz. Electrolux is actually the biggest company in Europe. They own a lot of brands, AEG, Zanker, Zanussi, Zoppas, Elektro-Helios, Electrolux (ofcourse) Marynen, Zanker and others.
The Philips label doesn't exist anymore, Whirlpool wasn't allowed to keep carrying the Philips label after they had completely taken over Philips' white goods branch in 1991. The double name Philips-Whirlpool was only used from 1989-1991, the two years for which the joint venture between both companies lasted. Whirlpool also owns Bauknecht.
The more expensive line of Bosch washers are still made in Germany. However, there are rumours Bosch also has plans to close down it's German factory. I guess they were inspired by AEG. Bosch white goods are manufactured by the BSH group (Bosch und Siemens Haushaltsgeräte). This group owns Bosch, Siemens, Constructa, Neff, Gaggenau, Thermador and a few less known labels.
Not all Miele products are made in Germany. Their toploaders, washer-dryer combo's, their built-in washers and dryers and their Little Giants are manufactured in the Czech Republic.
More comments welcome, I haven't covered it all by far, but that is quite difficult, there are many brands on the European market.
Louis
