Fagor Electrodomesticos Appliances

Formed in 1956 in a small workshop in Mondragon what was to become the largest co-operative group in the world was started. Today, The Mondragon Co-Operative Corporation has become a leading business group in the Basque Country and one of the top-ranking groups in Spain.

MCC brings together 122 industrial companies, 6 financial organisations, 14 retailers, 4 research centres, 1 university and 14 insurance companies and international trade services. It has a turnover of more than 14,700 million pounds and a workforce of over 69,000 people.

The group is divided up into three main divisions: the finance division, the retail division and the industrial division.

A program of major international expansion has seen Fagor achieve a workforce of 6,074 people and factories located in three continents: Europe, America and Africa with 13 subsidiaries throughout the world as well as a major sales network present in 80 countries in 5 continents.

Currently, 44% of Fagor's sales are international, and of these, 70% take place in those markets that are considered the most competitive: France, Portugal, Germany, Great Britain and (across the Atlantic), Czech Republic. Fagor, markets its products under seven different brand names including the following:

Fagor Edesa
Aspes
Mastercook
Brandt
De Dietrich
Fagor Commercial

The purchase of the Brandt Group in 2005 ensured that Fagor became one of the largest appliance manufacturers in Europe. This also included the brand names of Ocean and De Dietrich.

It does surprise people to learn that Fagor actually have about an approximate 4.5% share of the entire European market for appliances but, in the UK the brand is hardly recognised at all and certainly is not a household name, yet enjoys a higher market share than many far more well known brands such as Cand Hoover and LG among others.

Fagor Appliances

As with most manufacturers entering the UK Fagor started out at the cheap end of the market with poor quality but cheap appliances. At the time this included cheap ovens and cookers, especially gas cookers which were riddled with problems, like no gas safety cut-off and exploding glass doors. Times change and today the products are light years better than their distant predecessors but still Fagor struggles to cast off the "budget brand" stigma that is attached to it within the industry like many others in the same situation.

The recent purchase of the Brandt Group from Elco-Brandt (formerly just Elco), an Israeli company, included the upmarket French brand of De Dietrich which lies at the opposite end of the scale in terms of image.

On the whole the applainces that Fagor produce are actually pretty good for the market sector in which they operate, certainly no worse than any of the competition around it such as Bosch, Electrolux and we'd actually peg Fagor as better than Indesit, not that that is terribly hard.

The modern Fagor built in ovens are actually very good value and pretty decent appliances as are most of the rest of their built in and integrated ranges. After buying De Dietrich Fagor seem to have learned a lot from the upmarket French built in specialist.

Spares Pricing & Aftersales

Traditionally spares prices were pretty reasonable for Fagor products in the UK until the service contract changed earlier in 2006 to being handled by repaircare.net who now undertake all the Fagor Group service in the UK. Previously spares and service were handled by Anglo Iberian Service (AIS) based in Essex who were subsequently bought by Waterline Kitchens and then sold onto JTM Contracts in October of 2006.

We do supply spares and we do have some alternative routes to many parts are a far lower cost, but we have found that these can often take a little longer than the more expensive route but this is a situation that is constantly improving.

Since the service has been handled by repaircare (this happened in 2005) there has been a considerable rise in most spares prices, until recently, the sole UK importer of spares was Connect Distribution in Birmingham of whom repaircare is a trading division. Overnight many spare parts prices across all the brands increased dramatically, some in excess of a 100% increase in cost.

Fagor Service & Repairs

These price increases, along with very limited technical information in the past and little, if any, training gave the brands a bad image in the repair industry, especially the upmarket flagship De Dietrich brand as the appliances are technically complex and low volume.

Due to this for a long time many independent traders would either not attend these brands or, alternatively, would charge a premium to offset the additional work involved. Given that the spares are already expensive to start with this made the chance of an appliance being written off prematurely higher than usual as well as increasing the "hassle factor" for repairs which, especially with De Dietrich, was already high as generally speaking De Dietrich customers expect more.

In recent times however as new management have been brought in that are much more consumer service orientated this situation has improved dramatically.

As noted service is currently (2011) being carried out through a national network of independent engineers that are all subcontracted to a company called repaircare.

Alternative service that will often prove to be a much cheaper through the approved appliance repair engineers and you can search to find a local one on our Find An Engineer search facility.