Why Gazprom wants to produce refrigerators

A washing machine from Gazprom? « Should that be a joke? » Asks the Moscow tax advisor Katja. Under no circumstances would you buy such a device.

Nevertheless, Gazprom, known as a group with the largest gas reserves in the world, will produce washing machines and refrigerators in the future. As the newspaper reported on Tuesday, her subsidiary Gazprom Bytowyje Systemy still wants to launch such household appliance in 2025. To do this, she would like to start two stowing factories from the German manufacturer Bosch near Saint Petersburg. Vladimir Putin had placed it last April under the administration of the Gazprom daughter, who previously produced gas -powered household appliances such as hotplates or instantaneous heaters.

But the cooling and washing machine market could be difficult for the gas giant. Technically, according to the commercial, there is, among other things, the problem that you have to procure new software for the robots of the production assemblies. Bosch is said to have taken the license for the previous programs with them when they leave Russia.

And it is really unlikely that Russia’s consumer will prefer Gazprom refrigerators to the devices of South Korean or Chinese manufacturers such as Samsung, LG or Haier.

The Gazprom entry into the market was born out of necessity. The state company, with almost 500,000 employees still the largest patriotic employer after the Russian railway, is serious. And washing machine production is just one of the straws where Putin’s favorite group wants to pull out of the red numbers.

Losses of over a trillion ruble

For decades, Gazprom was considered the most fatest milking cow of the Russian state budget. But in the accountability report for 2024, the company announced losses of over a trillion ruble, the equivalent of almost 11.5 billion euros. In addition, it became public in January that 1600 of 4100 employees at the Gazprom center should be released. And a Gazprom strategy paper known in March predicts a false amount of the equivalent of 160 billion euros by 2034.

The European market, which Gazprom viewed long as its main domain, has broken away. From 200 billion cubic meters of export gas to the EU 2020, just 25.1 billion remained in 2023. The switch from Europe to China as a main Gazproma has failed so far. Mainly because the Chinese only want to pay prices that would be in Russia’s subsidized domestic prices, according to the Lenta.ru portal. Fatherland customers are considered to be weak.

Gazprom wants to expand its gas liquid capacities to conquer new markets. But that hardly works either, the Russian liquid gas export rose from 19.6 million tons in 2021 to just 21.4 tons in 2024. Expensive pipeline projects remain like a loudly discussed line to Iran. However, the Persians themselves promote gas that they would be as unsuitable as end customers as a middleman with lucrative relationships with the West. The plan to switch Russia’s car traffic as completely as possible to gas drive should be of little profit.

Specialist media conjure up a victory over Ukraine and the reputable return of the wealthy EU customers to bring Gazprom back into the road to success.

The group itself has a conceptless effect. According to Financial Times, he wants to close a department, among other things, whose experts are supposed to replace Western technologies with his own developments. This should hardly have a positive impact on the development of its fridge prototypes.