F&P Laundry in US

[stephen]

It appears Fisher and Paykel have discontinued Laundry appliances in the United States.
Website shows one model that says END OF LINE. An email to an Experience Center confirmed!

 

[ryner1988]

You know, it's funny you mention this, because I looked into getting an F&P top loader to replace my direct drive Whirlpool that just died. I remembered that Glenn/DADoES spoke very highly of them. Turns out, they haven't made top loaders for the US market in years. I also contemplated LG, but ended up just going with a cheap Whirlpool VMW washer and dryer and so far I'm pleased with both.

Ryne

 

[gizmo]

Gee that is a shame.

 

F&P, when New Zealand owned, were such great innovators, now they are owned by the Chinese giant, Haier.

 

They are still one of the most popular brands of washing machine here in Australia. (and dryers, dishwashers, fridges, stoves.)

 

[stephen]

Haier

Even Haier’s US website https://www.haierappliances.com/
doesn’t feature Haier Washing Machines anymore. I wonder if they are just going to sell washing machines under the GE brand in the US?

 

[hvtech42]

It's a real shame. Their top loaders were simply designed, proven for reliability for many years in Australia and New Zealand, great at washing and great spin speeds.

They had plans for becoming a much bigger player in the US laundry market. In 2006 they even built a factory in Clyde Ohio that produced FP washers and top-load dryers for North America, and also manufactured SmartDrive motors to both use in those machines and for supply to Whirlpool's adjacent (much larger) factory for their Cabrio.

Unfortunately it only lasted a couple years. A combination of the recession and the rapid shift of many US consumers to front loaders around that time did them in, I think.

 

[DADoES]

 
I have four washers and three dryers built in the Clyde factory.  Two washers and one dryer built in NZ.  One dryer (rebadged GE) built in Canada.

 

[launderess]

Haier only has rights to General Electric appliance brand names through 2026. What happens after that day is anyone's guess. We all here will long be beyond caring about such things by then.

 

[henene4]

I think the SmartLoad dryers were discontinued as they couldn't meet certain safety requirements.
Don't know if it was a fire safety thing or a child entrapment thing.
Keep in mind that in the EU basically all washers and dryers have to have doors a small child can open from the inside while not running. Same for DWs.

If you don't have a set, people (and I can't say that enough: that means most people, not us on here) don't buy your appliance, no matter how good they are.

Haier bought 90% of F&P in 2012. They basically used them as a high end and research platform.

Haier recently bought the Candy/Hoover brand in Europe.
They redesigned the well known F&P TLs on the Australian website.

It appears they want to expand aggressively into all sectors of the market, from entry to top end, in the major markets they were only small players in so far.

They do that by buying up brands and names, using any IP that might bring, and aggressively focusing on profit and market share.

The GE Combo looks like one of those projects that's pretty complicated and might be very GE.
They just couldn't finish it with their resources. Haier saw that IP, threw typical chinese engineering prowess at it, and finished it up.

I don't think F&P will really be lost from the US market - that compact GE FL is just a different generation of Haier, like the F&P was.

 

[hvtech42]

The regulations that led to the SmartLoad dryers being discontinued were definitely related to fire safety - the dryer had to contain a fire inside for a certain amount of hours without spreading. After that went into effect, a lot of European-made compact vented dryers were discontinued as well in the US market because they couldn't meet the regulations either.

For a long time after that, the only vented Euro dryer you could get in the US was Blomberg (Beko) because they were the only one that bothered re-engineering for the new regulations, though there may be more now.

F&P is still going in the high end/niche kitchen appliance market in the US, but they will never be a mass market player in the US laundry market if their only offering is a Euro-sized 24" washer. You can argue all day that you really don't need any more space than that, you can wash just as much in a Euro FL as you could in an agitator TL and nobody minded those, etc. But that's just the way the market is here, people don't buy small frontloaders unless they're in a small apartment with no other choice. And now that lone frontloader is marked as "End Of Line" on the FP US website, so it appears they're giving up altogether.