Speaking at a Advanced Manufacturers Forum meeting Amanda Hird, Operations Director of Ebac, said that there were delays to the production of new washing machines from Ebac.
Ebac specialises in making dehumidifiers and water coolers, but has ambitious plans to include washing machines to its repertoire – which should see the company double its turnover.
Amanda, the youngest daughter of Ebac chairman and founder John Elliott, said: “Washing machines and washing machine technology wasn’t an area of expertise for us, so we sub-contracted the best company possible to do work with us on this.
“In the last week of the testing, in the summer of this year, we identified a small problem which we weren’t happy about.
“We looked at the risk and decided that we couldn’t afford to launch a product that could potentially have a problem. We wanted everything to be right.
“So, we have redesigned one of the components, for which a prototype will be ready by January for rigorous testing.
“We should be on course to launch our washing machines in the Spring of next year.”
Amanda added: “The kitchen appliance industry in Britain has seen a decline in manufacturing as most major brands have now moved production to Europe.
“There are three million washing machines bought in the UK every year – all of them are from abroad.
“One of our USPs is British manufacturing so this is very important to us and something we feel passionately about.”
Amanda also spoke of Ebac’s pride in the development of its Dual Fill washing machine technology, which will offer faster washes and lower running costs as an alternative to traditional cold fill machines.
The benefits of this have been debated often and, on the whole for most people, most of the time it will offer little advantage and likely would not reduced bills on modern machines with low water levels required to meet modern energy requirements. A fuller explanation of why can be found in this article.
We are unaware of what “component” required the redesign, why or how serious the issue was but clearly, it was serious enough to warrant stalling the launch. However, this is a far better option than launching a product that was possibly defective from day one.
