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Our story with China

FISHER & PAYKEL

Founded in New Zealand in 1934, Fisher & Paykel is a home appliance manufacturer with a proud heritage and a culture of curiosity that has challenged conventional appliance design for decades.

Our New Zealand identity is unique in the home appliances sector, and is central to our organisational culture, brand, and who we are as a business. It is this homegrown legacy and focus on innovative design that saw Fisher & Paykel become a household name in New Zealand and Australia.

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Fisher & Paykel has long recognised the strategic importance of China, both as a key growth market and also in terms of the company’s connections with strategic partners in the region. For Fisher & Paykel to recognise its global growth ambition required the backing of a major global player in the home appliances sector.

For Fisher & Paykel, what was most important was finding the right global partner – one that would reinforce and enrich the company’s Designed in New Zealand philosophy.

In 2012, a deal was finalised with Haier Group for the full acquisition of the Fisher & Paykel Appliances business.

Haier’s global scale gave Fisher & Paykel the backing needed to invest in new product innovation, establish new strategic growth markets and build strength in its home markets of New Zealand and Australia.

Haier’s approach to its global partners is unique in the appliance industry. It provides Fisher & Paykel with a blend of guidance and autonomy – invested in shared success, listening and acting on feedback, and supporting our strategic imperatives at all stages.

Fisher & Paykel has adopted new disciplines – specifically in embedding Haier’s RenDanHeYi philosophy – aimed at accelerating change, bringing greater accountability and ownership into our business, and promoting a shared culture that ensures we put our collective strengths into the right things.

RenDanHeYi is now a central tenet of our strategy, and has enabled us to shift our thinking and delivery quickly and in a manner that can be sustained long into the future – leading and working in a way which empowers our people to be owners, reduce distance to our customers, and respond to their needs.

What is clear is that the RenDanHeYi model gives our teams the autonomy to make decisions that best reflect the needs of our customers and, in that autonomy, there is real opportunity to empower all business units to succeed.

This is where we see the most customer value. RenDanHeYi brings out the desire to own an outcome, and the shared belief in our Micro Enterprises to challenge what has come before and push conventional incremental goals.

The partnership between Haier and Fisher & Paykel has been lauded as an exemplar for close bilateral co-operation between China and New Zealand. In 2017, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited the Auckland-based Design Centre and spoke to the remarkable potential of this partnership to drive world-leading innovation, noting the complementary advantages both companies bring to the table.

We are deeply proud of our partnership and excellent working relationship with Haier. It is a partnership that has sharpened alignment within our business, and allowed us to drive a growth trajectory in the world’s biggest appliance markets that otherwise would not have been possible.

Learn more about Fisher & Paykel here.