Bosch invests €12M in heat pump production, 300 new jobs

Bosch announced on Tuesday that it was expanding its Thermo technology unit in Aveiro, with the installation of a €12 million heat pump production line and 300 jobs.

The new heat pump production line “means a total investment of €12 million in two distinct phases, and the creation of about 300 jobs,” Bosch said.

On 4 May, at the German group’s results press conference, the chairman of the Bosch board of directors, Stefan Hartung, announced that the group would begin “heat pump production in Portugal this year”.

In the press release, Bosch stressed that “the installation of this new heat pump production line is in line with the company’s energy transition strategy and the group’s focus on Thermo technology”.

This “is excellent news for our unit in Aveiro and the region and the country’s economy. We are talking about more production capacity, more jobs, and especially the fact that Bosch Aveiro is taking on a more predominant role in the future of heating solutions and Thermo technology”, Jónio Reis, Administrator from Bosch Aveiro, said in a press release.

Until now, Bosch Aveiro produced the indoor unit for air and water heat pumps in a single production line.

With the new production line, “it will also produce the heat pump’s outdoor unit”, the company said, stressing that “production is expected to start next year, during the first half of 2023, aiming to reach 150,000 units per year, but with the perspective that this number will increase in the medium term to 400,000”.

Bosch added that “the significant increase in demand for this product and the optimistic forecasts for the future, in the short and medium-term, has led to the implementation of demanding measures in the current production line in Aveiro, namely the doubling of production capacity through investment in additional equipment, to respond to the sales forecast of 37,000 units this year, a growth of 131% concerning 2021, and the implementation of a second assembly line for the production of the indoor units of the new heat pump family, with a launch date scheduled for the last quarter of this year, whose production capacity is approximately 60,000 units a year”.

These investments and the increase of the production capacity and the number of employees “is a clear sign of Bosch’s investment in Aveiro. This location becomes one of the main ones for the production and development of heat pumps within the Bosch group”, Jónio Reis said.

He added that the forecast is almost to double the turnover in the medium term.

“We cannot forget that the production combined with the investment in R&D of these solutions will translate into the hiring of highly specialised workers, all this with a direct impact in the results of Aveiro unit and in boosting the economy and attracting talent from all over the region,” the Bosch Aveiro director added.

In the presentation of the annual results for 2021, the group announced an investment of over €300 million in the heat pump business until the middle of the decade.