Who Owns Igloo And Where Are The Coolers Made?

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Igloo has been one of the biggest names in the cooler game for the better part of the past eight decades. Of course, you'd be right in assuming that the hard-sided coolers bearing the Igloo brand today are far more advanced than those steel models the company first delivered upon its founding in 1947. These days, Igloo even offers an iceless cooler that's been wowing Costco shoppers. The brand also hit the jackpot in the 1970s with the release of the best-selling Playmate tent-top model. 

The company was founded in Katy, Waller County, Texas, which is a suburb of Houston. If you've ever cruised down Interstate 10 through that area, you've surely passed by the massive Igloo complex that resides there, and that's where the company still manufactures most of its coolers.

Over the decades, several players have factored in the company's ownership history, including Coca-Cola, Quaker Oats, and Metropolitan Life Insurance. From the 1990s on, the Igloo brand was owned by various investment firms, mostly for brief periods. As of 2021, however, Igloo has been solely owned by Swedish investment outfit Dometic, which paid out a whopping $677 million to bring the iconic cooler outfit into its portfolio of holdings.

If you're not up to date on your Igloo history, the company began as an independent metalworking outfit that happened to invent a clever product that made it easy to bring cool, clean water to its production floor workers. But in its early days, Igloo was partnered with Texas Tennessee Industries, operating largely under that shingle. Igloo didn't become the company's official brand name until 1971. The manufacturing site in Katy, Texas, has long been Igloo's primary base of operations, and despite the current European ownership, it remains so today.

The site has served as the brand's primary production facility for several decades now. As of a 2023 report, the company was cranking out some 55,000 coolers per day from that facility, which then employed more than 1,200 Texans. For the record, that daily number translates to about 16 million coolers per year. According to some sources that claim to have gotten the info straight from Igloo representatives, that accounts for roughly 95% of the coolers the company makes, meaning the brand's products are mostly made in America.

About that last 5%, it reportedly includes most of the soft-sided cooler options that currently bear the Igloo brand. Those items, it would seem, are largely manufactured in Chinese facilities and then imported into the United States. The good news for Igloo super fans who prefer products made in the U.S. is that the high-tech Versatemp, which recently made our list of campsite-ready electric coolers, is one of the brand's Made in America models, and it's readily available on Amazon.