Electrolux, the world’s second largest appliance company, will buy the precision cooker manufacturer Anova Culinary for $250 million, the companies have announced.
Anova is known for its Anova Precision Cooker, an immersion circulator that heats and controls the temperature of a water bath you’d use for sous vide cooking. If you want to know what sous vide is, basically it’s cooking food in a bath of water at precise temperatures and is “the thing” in cooking circles just now but for more, Google is your friend.
“Although we, from afar, come across as very different companies, we have a lot in common,” said Ola Nilsson, the executive vice president of small appliances at Electrolux, in a video to Anova employees. “We have a great passion for great tasting food, both of us.”
Anova launched its precision cooker with a successful campaign on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter in 2014.
“It’s really a different business model than what we’re used to, and it’s something we can learn a lot from,” Electrolux CEO Jonas Samuelson said in an online video about the acquisition.
“With Electrolux, we’ll have the resources and reach to continue to change the way people cook,” Svajian said in a statement. “Electrolux is committed to helping Anova continue its mission of building the Anova Kitchen – a kitchen where devices are precise, dead simple to use, affordable and connected in a meaningful way to help people cook like pros every day.”
Anova is also poised to expand more aggressively overseas thanks to Electrolux’s established international footprint, Svajian said.
While sous vide may well be incorporated into more traditional Electrolux products who are better known here in Blighty under the AEG and Zanussi brands, they may well also use this as a part of their small appliances range as Electrolux is into that as well. And that wouldn’t shock us as they’re already into the instant hot tap and other more premium smalls.
