Blanco, the premium brand for the well-thought-out kitchen water place in private homes, has opened its own Australian subsidiary with a view to grow its business in the category.

Blanco Australia general manager, Gerard Gill told Appliance Retailer, Australia joins Singapore and China as the only three subsidiaries in the Asia Pacific region.

Gill heads up a team of 11 staff including representatives servicing every state and territory from new head office premises at Hyde Park in the Sydney CBD.

“Australia is a very important part of the Asia Pacific region for Blanco as we are a growing economy. I believe that our Blanco Unit represents an exciting concept for our customers and consumers. 

“Households spends 60% of their time in the kitchen at the spot that we call ‘waterplace’. The Blanco Unit is designed to deliver consumers with a sink, a tap and a waste disposal – which for a retailer entails a substantial trade-up. We will continue to focus on the ‘water place’ as a premium manufacturer that retailers can trust,” said Gill, who also has previous experience working with brands including Neff and Gaggenau during his time at Sampford & Staff.

“Blanco is a 97-year-old brand operating since 1925 and has huge brand equity as one of the first European kitchen brands distributed in Australia introduced to the local market by Michael King. The company made global sales of 483 million Euros in 2021 – an increase of 18% on the previous year with two-thirds of sales made outside of Germany. The company has 1,647 employees globally with three separate manufacturing facilities in Germany, North America and the Czech Republic.

“We are looking forward to introducing a new range of coloured Silgranite sinks and taps following on from the success of our matt black sinks launched earlier this year joining the anthracite, white and rock grey variants. Importantly, our sinks and taps are colour-matched which is almost impossible to achieve with two different brands.

“In this current market, consumers are focusing on premium brands and we look forward to growing the sink, tap and waste disposal categories.”