Miele & Cie. KG

Miele & Cie. KG, Gütersloh, makes premium domestic appliances for laundry, dishwashing, cooking and floor care, and machines and services for hotels, care facilities, laboratories and medical reprocessing ¹. It was founded in 1899 by Carl Miele and Reinhard Zinkann and is held by their families at 51.1% and 48.9% ⁷. The group employs about 23,000 people, runs 19 production sites (eight in Germany) and sells through 49 sales and service subsidiaries ^{1 9}.

The business has two pillars. Domestic is the larger and more cyclical one, exposed to housing activity and price competition in laundry. Professional passed €1B in revenue in 2025, up from a record €819M in FY 2023, and includes the SteelcoBelimed joint venture with Metall Zug, launched in June 2024 with about 2,100 employees and Miele holding 67% ^{1 11 12}.

The five-year record shows a pandemic peak, a sharp correction and a slow recovery. FY 2022 revenue reached €5.43B (+12.2%) ³. In FY 2023 revenue fell about 9% and unit sales fell roughly twice as much, as demand collapsed after three strong years and input costs rose ⁵. Miele answered with the Miele Performance Program in February 2024, targeting €500M of additional financial room by 2026 ⁵.

The program closed at the end of 2025 with the target met, personnel costs down more than €120M, 3,200 individual measures implemented and no compulsory redundancies in Germany ¹. Investment continued throughout: €468M in 2024 and 2025 combined, with a €500M target for Germany through 2028 and a plan to renew about 60% of the portfolio by then ¹.

The 2024 program changed the industrial footprint. Up to 2,700 positions worldwide were to be cut or relocated, about 2,000 of them mainly in indirect functions ⁵. Assembly of almost all domestic washing machines moves in stages from Gütersloh to Ksawerów, Poland, by 2027, removing about 700 jobs at the head plant; the press shop, foundry, machining, washer-dryers and small commercial machines stay in Gütersloh for now ⁵. In Germany about 1,300 of 11,700 jobs were affected, under an IG Metall agreement running to December 2028 that ties the cuts to €500M of domestic investment ⁶.

Outside Europe, Miele started its first US plant in Opelika, Alabama, in late 2024 to build built-in ovens for North America ⁸. Dongguan in China supplies vacuum cleaners ⁷. The resulting footprint is weighted toward Germany and Central Europe, with wage-cost relief coming from Poland and the Czech Republic.

Counterparty and governance. Family ownership with publicly identifiable beneficial owners and no external investors; registry status is active with no adverse filings ⁷.

Financial. No sign of distress. Revenue has grown for two years, the cost program is complete and investment has not been cut ¹. The main gap is that group earnings are not disclosed in press releases, so a buyer with large prepayments or consignment stock should review the filed statutory accounts.

Operational. The washing-machine move to Poland runs through 2027 and is the most likely source of temporary allocation, lead-time or origin changes ⁵.

Compliance and ESG. No sanctions designation; request the written sanctions and export-control policy at onboarding. Climate targets are SBTi-validated and Scope 1 and 2 emissions were down 54% against 2019 by 2025 ¹⁰. Product-compliance obligations (CE, EU energy label and EPREL registration, ecodesign spare-parts rules) apply to any importer of these goods and should be confirmed at contract stage.

Miele competes in the premium tier of a market where the largest European producer, BSH, is about three times its size. BSH reported €15.0B revenue in FY 2025 (−1.6% in euros, +2.8% in local currency), more than 56,000 employees and 37 factories, with laundry revenue down 1.0% because of a contested market ¹³. BSH is also closing its German plants in Nauen and Bretten, which shows the cost pressure on German appliance production across the sector ¹⁴.

Against this, Miele's growth in FY 2025 was similar in percentage terms and came from kitchens and professional customers ¹. Its differentiation rests on tested durability, a 25-year motor warranty on laundry appliances introduced in 2025, and direct service ¹. In professional laundry, dishwashing and medical reprocessing the field is narrower and service contracts matter more, which supports pricing.

Miele's targets were validated by the Science Based Targets initiative in 2021. By 2025 the group reported a 54% reduction in absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions and a 27% reduction in use-phase emissions of sold products, both against 2019 ¹⁰. The use phase represents about 83% of total emissions and purchased goods about 15%, so product efficiency and steel sourcing dominate the footprint; Miele has used low-CO₂ steel for hobs and ovens since 2021, which its supplier puts at about 66% lower production emissions ¹⁰. Sites generated 17.3 GWh of renewable electricity in 2025 ¹⁰.

For a buyer reporting under CSRD, these figures can feed Scope 3 category 1 and 11 estimates, and the EcoVadis Gold rating received in February 2026 can be cited in supplier-engagement disclosures ¹.