As Europe is heading into winter in the throes of an energy crisis amid rising prices of natural gas, there is explosive growth in Chinese exports of heating appliances, including electric blankets and electric heaters to Europe.
Compared with the statistics in August, Statistics from AliExpress, Alibaba Group’s business-to-customer or B2C site that sells consumer goods to overseas markets, showed sales of heating appliances, such as electric blankets, in the European market surged nearly 300% in September.
In September, sales of heating appliances in France, Germany and Poland skyrocketed 306 percent, 303 percent and 297 percent month-on-month, respectively, given that European consumers are expanding their purchases of heating appliances ahead of the approaching winter.
The B2B Platform of Alibaba has noted that there is surging demand for heat pump water heaters, especially in Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, with orders soaring more than 100 percent year-on-year in the past 90 days.
According to China’s General Administration of Customs, the European Union’s 27 member states imported 1.29 million units of electric blankets from China in July, an increase of 150 percent compared with 521,000 units in June.
With natural gas supplies from Russia becoming volatile and amid continuously soaring energy prices, China’s energy-saving heating appliances at reasonable prices are increasingly gaining popularity among European consumers.
Chinese home appliance brand Midea Group is ramping up efforts to upgrade its heat pump products, which could reduce 60 to 80 percent of carbon emissions compared with coal-fired boilers so as to address the natural gas shortage in Europe.
It was reported that exports of Midea’s heat pumps surged 215 percent year-on-year, for the first seven months.
With strong demand arising from European consumers, and given the commercial and industrial use of heat pumps, demand for heat pumps in the European market is expected to exceed 40 million units in the future, with the total market scale surpassing 400 billion Euro, according to the Chinese securities firm, Cinda Securities.
