Miele & Cie. KG

Miele & Cie. KG is a German limited partnership (Kommanditgesellschaft) with its registered seat at Carl-Miele-Straße 29, 33332 Gütersloh, entered in the commercial register of Amtsgericht Gütersloh under HRA 3268; VAT ID DE126784329 ¹. The personally liable general partners are two family holding companies, Miele Verwaltungs-GmbH (HRB 1325) and Zinkann Verwaltungs-GmbH (HRB 1324), both registered at the same court ¹. The company was founded in 1899 in Herzebrock by Carl Miele and Reinhard Zinkann and moved to Gütersloh in 1907 ².

The registry data is consistent across the legal notice, the press boilerplate and third-party profiles. No insolvency, liquidation or dissolution notices were identified. For contracting, the counterparty should be named exactly as "Miele & Cie. KG" and distinguished from the separate German sales entity Miele Vertriebsgesellschaft Deutschland KG, which carries its own HRA number at the same court ¹.

Ownership sits entirely with the two founding families, with the Miele family holding 51.1% and the Zinkann family 48.9% ². There is no external shareholder, no listed equity and no private-equity involvement, so there is no exit or refinancing event that could change the counterparty during a multi-year contract.

The executive board has six members with equal rights: the two managing partners Dr. Markus Miele and Dr. Reinhard Zinkann, plus four non-family executives, among them Rebecca Steinhage (Human Resources & Corporate Affairs) and Stefan Koss (Finance & Administration, who joined from BSH) ^{2 4 13}. Board changes are announced well in advance and the family structure has been stable for four generations. The beneficial owners are publicly identifiable, which simplifies KYC files under the EU anti-money-laundering rules.

A search of OpenSanctions, which consolidates the OFAC SDN list, the EU consolidated financial sanctions list, UN and UK lists and more than 20 national datasets, returned no sanctions designation for "Miele & Cie" or for the Zinkann family name ³. Name matches on "Miele" relate to unrelated private individuals in US debarment and PEP datasets.

As part of onboarding, a buyer with US exposure should still obtain Miele's written sanctions and export-control policy, which is standard for any supplier selling into many markets.

No coverage of fraud, bribery, product-safety enforcement or litigation of material size was found in German or international media for the last 24 months. The dominant negative theme is the 2024 restructuring. In February 2024 Miele announced that up to 2,700 positions worldwide could be cut or relocated, and that assembly of almost all domestic washing machines would move in stages from Gütersloh to Ksawerów, Poland, by 2027, affecting about 700 jobs at the head plant ⁸. In June 2024 the German figure was set at about 1,300 of 11,700 jobs, agreed with IG Metall under a future and social collective agreement running from August 2024 to December 2028 ⁹.

These reports concern cost and footprint decisions. They are relevant for supply-continuity planning on washing machines, where the production site will change during a typical contract term, and do not point to compliance or integrity issues.

Miele publishes revenue and headcount at an annual press conference; it does not publish group earnings in its releases. Revenue peaked at €5.43B in FY 2022, fell about 9% in FY 2023 as post-pandemic demand weakened, and has grown modestly since ^{6 7 8}. FY 2025 revenue of €5.16B is still about 5% below the FY 2022 level.

The Miele Performance Program, launched in 2024, met its €500M savings target by the end of 2025, cut personnel costs by more than €120M and avoided compulsory redundancies in Germany ⁴. Miele invested €468M in 2024 and 2025, about €300M of it in Germany, and has confirmed a €500M investment target for Germany through 2028 ⁴. The professional business now contributes more than €1B of revenue ⁴. These signals indicate a company that responded early to a demand downturn while continuing to invest.

Miele operates 19 production sites, eight of them in Germany, and 49 sales and service subsidiaries ⁴. Manufacturing is concentrated in Germany and Central Europe, with one plant each in China and the United States. The first US plant, in Opelika, Alabama, started production in 2024 ^{5 10}. Medical and laboratory reprocessing equipment is made by SteelcoBelimed, a joint venture launched on 7 June 2024 in which Miele holds 67% and Metall Zug 33%, with about 2,100 employees ¹².

For sourcing, the country of origin matters: domestic washing machines are moving from Gütersloh to Ksawerów through 2027 ⁸, so origin declarations and preferential-origin calculations on these SKUs will change during the contract term.

Miele's climate targets were validated by the Science Based Targets initiative in 2021. By 2025 the group had reduced absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 54% against 2019, ahead of its 50% target for 2030, and use-phase emissions of sold products (Scope 3, category 11) by 27% ¹¹. The use phase accounts for about 83% of the group's greenhouse-gas footprint, so product energy efficiency is the main lever ¹¹. Sites generated 17.3 GWh of renewable electricity on site in 2025 ¹¹.

Miele received an EcoVadis Gold medal in February 2026 and has offered a 25-year warranty on motors of washing machines, dryers and washer-dryers since 2025 ⁴. For buyers reporting under CSRD, this provides supplier-level emissions data and a third-party rating that can be referenced directly in Scope 3 supplier engagement.

Miele runs a consistent corporate site, national sites for each sales subsidiary and a separate professional channel, with a public production-site list and regular press releases in several languages ^{4 10}. Ten Stiftung Warentest test wins were reported for 2024 ⁵. Miele Switzerland was rated the country's most trusted appliance brand for the ninth consecutive year ⁴.

The brand's premium position rests on durability claims (lab testing for up to 20 years of service life) and service coverage, which are relevant to warranty economics for a distributor ⁵. No pattern of unresolved consumer complaints, counterfeit-channel issues or employer-review concerns was identified in the sources reviewed.

The checks support onboarding Miele as a low-risk supplier. Before signing a framework agreement, close the following points: