Translations:Hauptseite/36/en

BSH has always regarded itself not only as a German but also a European company. As the leading home appliance manufacturer, most of the production locations and sales organizations today are located in Europe. The Netherlands is home to the oldest representative offices of the parent companies of BSH, Bosch and Siemens outside of Germany. Siemens & Halske products were represented in The Hague by the company Wisse, Piccaluga & Co. as far back as 1879. The company Willem van Rijn then took over as sole representative of Bosch products in the Netherlands in 1903. Soon after it was established, BSH began to position itself on the European market. BSH’s European expansion began in Greece and Slovenia in the 1970s. BSH continued to expand its presence in Europe in the 1980s, acquiring a majority share in the Spanish home appliance manufacturer Balay-Safel. In 1998, BSH also acquired the remaining shares in Balay, which by then also included the Safel brand, thus making the company a wholly-owned subsidiary of BSH. Another Local Hero of BSH. Home appliances from BSH have been available in Poland since 1990. A plant for assembling washing machines was opened close to the Polish city of Łódź in 1994. It was the first new plant to be built by BSH in Eastern Europe, The washing machines from Łódź were initially intended exclusively for the Eastern European markets but were also produced for EU countries from 1999. Today, alongside the assembly plant for front-loader washing machines, Łódź is also home to a logistics center, a dishwasher plant, a plant for washer-dryers, the new and the new development center for dryers, and the Regional Contact Center (RCC).