HVAC History – The Demise of Friedrich Air Conditioning Manufacturing in the US

The loss of so many manufacturing facilities in the US during the 2010s, painful as it was and still is, is history. In an open economy like the US, and with fierce competition for goods (no longer protected by expired patents) on price, very many items of home equipment have ceased US manufacture under competition from China. Now increasingly other low-income industrializing nations are taking manufacture away from China in the same manner.

The stock market problems of 2007 and 2008 further accelerated the process of factory closures in the US. The example of Friedrich Air Conditioning’s closure in 2007,  is typical of many which were occurring at the time. It is worthwhile noting that the invention of refrigerated display for food in retail shops is largely attributed to Friedrich Air Conditioning.

We were sorry to see that a tiny part of the recent history of Friedrich Air Conditioning in the US manufacturing field had been lost through a broken link. There was a lost citation from 2007. However, after a long period of searching, we found the original article in an RSS Feed of the original and have duplicated it below:

The link http://www.softrock1019.com/mainheadlines3.html&article_id=2651952&feed_id=119078 was not recoverable from the original website, nor from the Wayback Machine.

The following article was found at:

http://www.manufacturingnews.com/subscribers/users_orig.cgi?mfgnews_username=mbg&flag=show_entire_issue&id_issue=227&id_title=1&id_sub=459&id_sl=

Manufacturing News
September 28, 2007 Vol. 14, No. 17

Manufacturing Plants Closing In The United States:

Albany International Corp.
Friedrich Air Conditioning Co.

“Friedrich Air Conditioning Co., the last U.S. manufacturer of air-conditioning window units, is closing its San Antonio manufacturing plant and moving its production to Monterrey, Mexico. At least 263 workers will be laid off when the production line shuts down on Nov. 16. The company says that low-priced air conditioners from China are forcing it to move out of the United States. It is the first time in the company’s 124-year history that it has had to close its U.S. production. “It’s sad,” said Jane Deming, Friedrich marketing services manager. “The costs were just too much. We have been working at this for five to 10 years. We’ve done everything we could do. There is nothing that could have been done differently that has not been tried. It’s just the way this industry has evolved.” More than nine million air conditioners were imported into the United States last year.”

The citation can be found on Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Air_Conditioning