Who Owns Whirlpool And Are Its Appliances Made In The USA?
Whirlpool is one of the most recognizable appliance brands on the market, and it's also one of the most long-lived. It's been around since 1911, having originally been founded as a manufacturer of electric washers in Benton Harbor, Michigan. Today, it makes a variety of appliances, including some under the KitchenAid brand, which it acquired in 1986. Since 2006, Whirlpool has also owned and manufactured Maytag's line of appliances, and it additionally owns various other brands like Amana, JennAir, and Gladiator.
The Whirlpool Corporation is a publicly owned company, with its shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It's majority owned by various institutional investors, with BlackRock holding the largest single stake on behalf of its clients. Other big names in the financial world, like Fidelity (via FMR LLC) and Vanguard, also hold significant stakes, again with the ultimate owners of those shares being institutional investors. For the uninitiated, an institutional investor is an entity rather than an individual, and they can be things like hedge funds, commercial banks, insurance companies, or pension funds.
In total, institutional investors account for roughly 55% of Whirlpool's stock, according to data from Investing.com. The other 45% is held by various mutual funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds). Vanguard's Primecap Fund is the mutual fund with the largest individual stake in Whirlpool, holding just under 4% of the company's stock at the time of writing.
Whirlpool makes many of its appliances in America
Despite plenty of appliance brands having American roots, very few of those brands are still made in America. Whirlpool is one of those brands, with around 80% of its U.S.-market appliances being made domestically. The corporation has various facilities around the country, but its headquarters is in the same location today as it was back in 1911, in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
On the East Coast, the firm's plant in Fall River, Massachusetts, handles its commercial laundry operations, while the brand makes its ranges in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Several of Whirlpool's manufacturing plants are located in Ohio, with its freezers and refrigerators made in the village of Ottawa, Ohio, and its dryers built in Marion, Ohio. Washers are built in Clyde, Ohio, in a factory that's been in operation since 1952.
Appliances sold under Whirlpool's Maytag, Amana, and KitchenAid brands are also manufactured in the U.S. in separate plants. In total, Whirlpool says that it employs 14,000 people in its current manufacturing facilities. Alongside Whirlpool, GE Appliances is one of a handful of other brands that make some appliances in America, although unlike Whirlpool, GE is ultimately owned by a Chinese company.