2022.06.15
Philips – Transformation & circularity
Over the past decade, Royal Philips has transformed into a leading health technology company, focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the entire healthcare chain, from healthy lifestyles and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. And four years ago, Philips began selling refurbished products.
Royal Philips took another step towards transformation when it announced in September 2021 that Hillhouse Investment had acquired Philips' Domestic Appliances business area, for a total sum of EUR 4.4 billion, including a licensing agreement regarding the Philips brand for 15 years.
Royal Philips' goal is to improve the lives of 2.5 billion people by 2030 (with a target of 2 billion by 2025) and they are well on track as they state that in 2020 they improved the lives of 1.75 billion people.
Philips Domestic Appliances is now a separate company focusing on household products in the categories kitchen appliances, floor care, air care, garment care and espresso.
Royal Philips had sales of EUR 19.5 billion in 2020, divided between the business areas Diagnosis & Treatment (EUR 8.2 billion, +4 %), Connected Care (EUR 5.6 billion, +19 %) and Personal Health (EUR 5.4 billion, +8 %), and the latter category includes – now included – Domestic Appliances, which accounted for approximately 2.2 of the 5.4 billion in 2020.
Refurbished products
If you click on the ”Household Products” tab on www.philips.se (where Philips Domestic Appliances products are found), you will find the heading ”Refurbished Products”, where you can buy a number of different refurbished products from Philips. At the bottom of the page it says that Philips will have sold more than 30,000 refurbished products in 2020 – an update would therefore be in order – and APPLiAnytt contacted Philips to get an answer on whether they managed to achieve what they promised.
Louise Widmark, European Sustainability Lead at Philips Domestic Appliances, responded that they reached the goal and had sold more than 30,000 refurbished products in 2020, and said that since 2018, Philips Domestic Appliances has sold more than 85,000 refurbished products globally (mainly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, the UK, Poland and the Nordics) mainly via the website.
They refurbish approximately 4,000 Domestic Appliances products per month, which means that – assuming all refurbished products are sold – they sell close to 50,000 refurbished products annually. Real circularity, then.
Text: Ola Larsson
Image: Philips.se
