Homa Appliances Co., Ltd. was incorporated in 2002. It was a year of great revolutions in the world, which was never to be same since the tragic events of 2001, but was becoming more tightly connected and interdependent. Europe had just given itself a common currency, the Euro, and for the first time the world set itself the task to cut global emissions of greenhouse gasses with the Kyoto Protocol. At Homa, we felt an urge to be part of it all, and wanted our share of the action: Homa was in the world, making products for the world. Most of all, we felt the need to trace our own new way to do business, and lead rather than follow. So we set off to revolutionise the industry, with the sacred fire of passion burning inside. This is the story of a small factory that turned into a mighty company, who deployed its wings across the world, not to conquer it it but to take care of its dreams.

2002
In this world, for this world

— Shier Cai 2002
Founder of Homa Appliances, standing on the site of the first production plant just before construction started.

In the year of its foundation and incorporation, Homa Appliances started small, as in every tale of achievement and success. It manufactured mainly small-sized refrigerators and its technology was simply on par with the rest of the pack. As for design, at the time, clients didn’t really expect anything beyond the standard white box, and were mostly looking for the best price-performance deal. Yet in the minds of our founders, this was the start of a different story, one that would soon change the rules of the game in the traditionally quiet, unexciting world of OEMs. As imperceptible as it was in the beginning, change slowly instilled in the business and, most of all, marked the minds of international buyers, who started appreciating this new kind of attitude from the company’s management: attentive and caring, able to listen and who understood their needs and those of their own customers, and provide solutions that seemed tailor-made for them and even anticipated their aspirations.
We consider ourselves as a refined craftsman chiseling personalised products and at the same time we pride ourselves in being an industrial giant.

— Founders  2003
The original founding group of Homa Appliances, on the site of the first plant.

2005
The year of the Million

— Designer’s sketches
Designing emotions is an ancient craft, and often starts with pen and paper.

Europe, one of the world’s most important markets, was of course among our primary objectives. A challenging mission for a still relatively small company from Guangdong. Sophisticated and demanding, European consumers also had a vast and deeply rooted food culture, and brands needed to take such peculiarities into account. Yet this was possibly the key to Homa’s spectacular European growth in just 3 years, with production reaching the 1 million mark by 2005. Culture, an eminently human feature, had won the day. While the world welcomed the birth of YouTube, and witnessed the launch of Facebook one year later, it was precisely Homa’s capacity to connect, listen and swiftly act upon that emotional intelligence, industrialising sensations and feelings into real-world products, that helped us make our first true global breakthrough in the industry. For these products inevitably resonated with brands and consumers alike since they were the result of a cultural process, which also involved Homa’s newly established European bureau. Also, a forward-looking and balanced European design made Homa’s products stand out in the sea of white, while allowing mass personalisation for the diverse brand identities they would sell under.
If we have evolved, along with the rest of society, some things have remained the same: our spirit, our enthusiasm and our dedication.

2008
Rising star

— Caring for quality
Carrying out a sound test in Homa’s R&D laboratories

In 2008 sales had reached 2.5 million units, making Homa the world’s first exporter of cooling appliances, not only in Europe, but globally, the same year Beijing hosted the Olympics. Two historic firsts, for China and for Homa. By that time Homa had evolved from being a simple OEM to a true Original Design Manufacturer, with clients turning to Zhongshan for advice on upcoming trends in the industry. Homa’s way, based on establishing true and long lasting relationships with its partners, was bearing its fruits. Care, distinctive design and the idea that a product identified more in its ultimate function, its vocation, than in its material components, became the hallmark of this one-ofa-kind ODM “with a soul”, and the three pillars of our corporate wisdom. For refrigerators, function undoubtedly translated in the concept of Food Preservation, which went well beyond the simple assembly of a white box producing cold. With Europe now a solid market for our refrigerators, and despite the onset of the perfect economic storm that hit the world economy that very year, Homa consistently expanded in other regions as well, with production and sales volumes on a steady, double digit growth path.

— Production line
Fitting out the inner lining with pipes and cabling

— Passion for precision
Great care is taken in every step of production

— All in line
Precision, automation and craftsmanship combined to consistently deliver the best quality.

2012
Listed on the Stock Exchange

Bell ceremony at Shenzhen Stock Exchange

2012 was the year of Homa’s listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the same year as Twitter went public. Bruno Mars, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga were topping the charts worldwide. Homa was now officially part of China’s, and the world’s, industrial aristocracy, and well into its fastest growth period with production figures rocketing to an impressive 5 million units. Talking about rockets, 2012 was also the year China sent its first female astronaut, 33 year old Liu Yang, in space with the Shenzou-9 mission. Homa, on its part, kept exploring new solutions to bring to the world food preservation at its best. While the global society kept changing, Homa changed with it, adapting to the new situations and growing bigger, and stronger: in a way, constantly changing, not to change, keeping true to our pillars of wisdom and delivering meaningful cooling technology and thrilling design at the precise moment world markets were ready for them. The following year, Homa introduced its first No-Frost refrigerator.

— No-Frost refrigerator
Introducing the right technology at the right time.

2018
An established leadership

In 2018, Paul Romer won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences “for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis”. As it happens, that motivation also perfectly described Homa’s approach to new technology, bringing on proven innovations the moment they became relevant and meaningful in the greater context of societal and industry trends in the markets they were aimed at. That same year, production reached and exceeded 12 million, thanks to our continued expansion of our industrial capacity. 2018 also marked the 10th consecutive year of Homa’s leadership as the n.1 global exporter of refrigerators, with over 85% of production destined to foreign markets. We certainly had no intention to stop there, and continued investing to evolve and upscale our manufacturing footprint. Before the pandemics struck, in 2019, Homa churned out a little less than 40 thousand units every day for a total production capacity of over 12 million units per year, distributed over its 7 production facilities, with above average quality and equipment efficiency. With the outbreak of the pandemics there was a risk it would all come to a halt.

— Homa Showroom
Slick and square. Full metal look.

— Homa Showroom
Elegance beyond the sea of white

— Homa Showroom
Proudly flying the colours

2021
Giving the virus the cold shoulder

—No-Frost
Building site of the new district

— Work in progress
Laying the foundations of the new No-Frost district

— Project
New No-Frost district 3D rendering

— Reshaping work habits
The new No-Frost district is a true multifunctional hub comprising a production plant, a parts factory, a staff campus and a logistics centre

2022
One hundred million reasons to celebrate

— Celebrations time
20 years and 100 Million appliances produced in Homa’s factories

As Homa turns 20, and looking back at our extraordinary journey, we realises how different the world was in 2002, and so were we all. But Homa is still the same, we just grew, and changed, not to change anything to the precious relationships we have established over two decades and the new ones we keep building every day. Today, Homa develops new products from 1 R&D center, 3 international design houses, and more than 60 testing laboratories, altogether employing more than 150 engineering staff. Homa’s 43 different product platforms are produced in our 9 existing plants by around 10.000 workers. Since the first refrigerator came out of the original factory, more than 100.000.000 products have been produced in these first twenty years.

We will continue to bring to the world, the best possible food preservation systems, with the best design, and the most efficient technology. And yes, we still have dreams, in particular that of a healthy planet, with a cleaner atmosphere, clear waters and protected wilderness. We like to think that if we can dream it, we can design it, and build it! Sustainable design is part of Homa’s DNA, and is available to all, because we want to make the difference, and while we take care of your dreams, we also want to help our children achieve theirs.

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