Swedish heating-technology group (Nasdaq Stockholm), headquartered in Markaryd with around 21,000 employees and roughly SEK 47 billion in 2023 sales. In 2023 NIBE acquired 83% of Solzaima, the Águeda-based Portuguese maker of pellet and wood stoves, giving the group a manufacturing base for biomass heating across Southern Europe.
NIBE Industrier is a Swedish heating-technology group founded in 1952 in Markaryd and listed on Nasdaq Stockholm since 1997. It develops and manufactures air- and ground-source heat pumps, domestic stoves and element/component products, employs around 21,000 people worldwide and generated just under SEK 47 billion in sales in 2023, organised into three business areas: NIBE Climate Solutions, NIBE Element and NIBE Stoves.
NIBE’s most concrete Portuguese footprint came in July 2023, when it agreed to acquire 83% of Solzaima — Equipamentos de Energias Renováveis, with the remaining shares to follow by 2028. Solzaima, founded in 1978 and based in Águeda in the Aveiro district south of Porto, makes a broad range of pellet- and wood-fired heating products, employs around 200 people and had turnover of just over EUR 20 million at acquisition. Consolidated into NIBE from 1 September 2023 as part of the NIBE Stoves business area, Solzaima holds a strong market position in Portugal and has also built up sales in Spain and France, making it NIBE’s platform for the pellet-products segment that dominates Southern European biomass heating.
The Solzaima deal is a clear example of Nordic-into-Portugal industrial M&A: rather than exporting into Iberia, a large Swedish group bought an established Portuguese manufacturer and made it the production hub for an entire product line across Southern Europe. For the corridor it shows Portugal acting not just as a sales market for Nordic industry but as a manufacturing and export base that a Nordic parent can plug into its wider European strategy.
NIBE entered 2024 in a tougher climate: after a strong 2023, the European heat-pump market fell sharply, and in March 2024 the group gave notice of around 340 redundancies in Sweden (part of a wider cost-saving programme affecting roughly 500 staff and targeting about SEK 600 million in annual savings) as it adjusted to weaker demand. The downturn was concentrated in the heat-pump business; the stoves operations that house Solzaima sit in a separate, more locally driven segment of NIBE’s portfolio.
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