French engineer Ferdinand Carré invented absorption cooling in 1958. In this process — used in today’s Dometic, and most other, refrigerators — a heat source provides the energy needed to create a cooling effect. More than 50 years later, two Swedish engineering students at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, perfected Carré’s design.
Baltzar von Platen and Carl Munters were still students when, in 1923, the pair patented the world’s first refrigerator with no compressor, moving parts or ice. Though Arctic acquired the product’s manufacturing rights, two years later, appliance company Electrolux bought Arctic. The OEM supplier gained popularity selling millions of refrigerators to homeowners after WWII, eventually renaming the company Dometic.
Over the years, Dometic expanded into the RV market, selling awnings, toilet systems, washing machines, lighting, vacuum systems and other RV accessories. Today, the company caters to the RV industry, in addition to marine, retail and lodging, and commercial vehicle markets.
When the 2009 recession hit, Dometic moved their plant from Motala, Sweden, where they had manufactured refrigerators since 1922, to Elkhart, Indiana. After down-sizing and focusing on areas needing growth during the recession, the company has grown to almost 7,000 employees working out of 22 plants worldwide.
Private equity firm EQT acquired Dometic in 2011 and took the company public in 2015. As a publicly traded company, Dometic is exploring longer lasting and alternative power technologies.
