Sustainability is also about extending the life of products and offering more economical solutions to customers

Whirpool in Italy: Say reconditioned, and the mind flies to smartphones. The thousands of units from Apple, Samsung and the other top Android brands are now available at competitive prices on many channels after being refurbished, eliminating aesthetic and functional damage. However, a novelty comes from Italy because it is here that Whirlpool has set up a centre for the refurbishment of household appliances, recovered and restored to return to the market.

This is a useful way of reducing the enormous amount of appliances that end up in landfills, but also an effective way of extending the life cycle of products increasingly linked to the concept of planned obsolescence which, as opposed to repair, multiplies the number of parts to be thrown away, forcing consumers to buy a new appliance.

This move is also due to the lack of awareness of the refurbished option on the part of most consumers, so much so that a survey commissioned in 2022 by Whirlpool Corporation and YouTrend in Italy showed that 78% had never bought refurbished products, while 82% of participants who had bought at least one refurbished device would advise others to do so as a sustainable choice.

The logistics hub serving the whole world

Although Whirlpool’s top management is not interested in the importance of the act since, as specified by Paolo Lioy, CEO of Whirlpool Italy & Iberia, “We are not interested in being the first but in leading the market in this area of sustainability”, no projects aimed at reconditioning household appliances have been launched in Italy so far. Whirlpool has done so by following the example of what is already happening in its logistics hub in the United Kingdom, starting with a 2,000 square metre space opened in September 2022 inside the EMEA Spare Parts Centre in Carinaro, in the province of Caserta and just over twenty minutes drive from Naples.

A choice that is anything but random, not so much because this is the place where Indesit (one of the brands under the Whirlpool umbrella along with KitchenAid, Ariston, Hotpoint, Maytag, Consul, Brastemp, Amana, Bauknecht, JennAir, Yummly and InSinkErator, for a group that in 2022 had a turnover of almost $20 billion, with 61,000 employees and 56 research and production centres) was once produced washing machines and built-in refrigerators.

With 233 employees, including administrative staff, who work shifts averaging seven and a half hours from 5 am to 7 pm (while from midnight to 4 am, the systems program the orders), more than 10 million spare parts and accessories are shipped each year from the 62,000 square metre factory in Carinaro (the size of nine football pitches). The reason is as practical as natural, precisely because Carinaro is the EMEA spare parts centre and, therefore, the ideal place to repair products. Only here can you find the parts you need to fix washing machines, refrigerators and ovens, together with the knowledge and experience required to recondition household appliances.

On the seven-metre-high shelves are all the spare parts and reworked products exported to more than 20 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North America and the Latin American region, with a total of 7,000 customers, 400 suppliers and 100,000 new references handled over twelve months. Numbers that alone allow you to imagine the capabilities of a work planning studied down to the smallest detail, where skill, intellect and human experience still prevail over automation and software (obviously very useful for speeding up times and processing orders).

How the refurbishment centre for household appliances works

Along the lines of what has been happening in the UK for some time, Carinaro Whirlpool is setting up a virtuous path to support the circularity of its products. The plan is still at the beginning of the process, and with ten employees, the reconditioning centre currently processes 50 pieces per day, for a total of 1,100 appliances per month. “Putting thousands of pieces back into circulation does not change the world, but it is a concrete project and a starting point to change the status quo because sustainability is not just a green stamp,” says Paolo Lioy as he accompanies us on a tour of the factory. The desire to ‘prioritise repair rather than replacement‘, as summarised by Marco Bellinzona, Senior Director of Consumer Service EMEA, is demonstrated by the organisation structured by Whirlpool to solve consumer problems as quickly as possible.

The Caserta hub, which is one of the group’s two EMEA spare parts and accessories logistics hubs, is one of the tools put in place to maintain a direct line with customers even after purchase. A strategic element in this regard is the Fabriano contact centre, where 115 employees handle more than 4,000 calls a day, providing information and advice to consumers to help them fix simple technical shortcomings or minor appliance problems. An ‘effective way of solving at least 20% of cases‘, specifies Eleonora Morettini, Head of Consumer Service Italy & Iberia, which is also useful for reducing the number of on-site interventions and, therefore, the wait for those who have to wait for the technician to arrive for the repair or for the courier to send the part to the Carinaro warehouse.

The time of the refurbished process, from the arrival of the product in Carinaro to the complete processing with final testing and packaging and the stocking of the reworked product, varies between 10 and 15 days. For the time being, this mainly concerns washing machines, refrigerators and ovens that have aesthetic or functional defects, with the latter being repaired. In contrast, at the aesthetic level, the work aims to eliminate the damage or reduce it as much as possible before putting the product back on the market at a reduced price, with a saving of around 10%-15% (appliances that cannot be repaired are disposed of, following Italian regulations).

Refurbished products are always covered by a two-year warranty and are divided into Second Life and New Life. The former are units that have been used before and reconditioned from the damage they have suffered. At the same time, the latter are products that have never been used by the consumer and have suffered minor, aesthetic damage to the sides, mostly during transport.

In both cases, Whirlpool employees go through all the parts, changing them where new ones are needed and testing the functioning of each activity in the product, which is put on the market when it passes all the steps. At the same time, those interested in buying after the refurbishment can go through Whirlpool’s Italian Consumer Services, with employees and their families having access to the company outlets instead. In this startup phase, the refurbished units were produced up to three years ago, as they are equipped with young technologies and therefore have a less environmental impact.

As for the actual reconditioning process, after the analysis of the technicians who draw up the necessary interventions and spare parts, the repair process starts from the roller conveyor (similar to the one where passengers place their trolleys during airport controls), then the electrical safety tests take place before starting the long test phase (3 steps), with washing machines and dryers tested several times in all their respective functions. At the same time, refrigerators follow one another along the wall in the background and remain on for 24 hours to monitor the internal temperatures and see how they react. Once the various steps have been completed, it is time for sanitisation and, finally, the packaging, which begins the journey to the end user, who finds himself with a fixed appliance, with accessories and user manuals, while remaining unaware of the work carried out during the remanufacturing phase.

With the aim of increasing the figures in the near future, Whirlpool is looking ahead and aiming to test new sales opportunities for household appliances comparable in brand conception to other types of devices. The idea that will be launched in the summer in the UK is to allow the product to be used for a limited period of time, varying between three and five years, against a sort of monthly subscription, with the subsequent return to the factory to refurbished it and put it on the market at a lower price. Thus, extending the life of household appliances offers consumers a valid and cheaper purchase alternative and relieves the environment by reducing the amount of electronic waste going to landfill.