Ebac Brand Guidelines: Dehumidifiers, Water Coolers and a County Durham Foundation

One order for dehumidifiers in County Durham.

Ebac is a British manufacturer of dehumidifiers, water coolers, washing machines and heat pumps based at Newton Aycliffe, in County Durham in north-east England. The name stands for Elliott Brothers Air Control. Its founder, John Elliott, served an electrical engineering apprenticeship in Bishop Auckland, Aycliffe Today reported in April 2012, quoting The Northern Echo, before sketching out a design for a dehumidifier for a client.

The founding year depends on the source. The company says Elliott Brothers Air Control was founded in 1972; the 2012 press report said Ebac was formed in 1973 to make that unit, and English Wikipedia puts the first order in 1972 and the company’s foundation in 1973. Ebac says that from a single order of 16 dehumidifiers, John Elliott and his brothers put together a basic manufacturing plant on a family poultry farm and delivered the order on time.

Through the 1970s, the company says, it developed “builder dryers” — dehumidifiers for drying out buildings under construction — before applying its industrial experience to products for the home in the 1980s. English Wikipedia says Ebac developed the UK’s first mass-produced domestic dehumidifier in 1980; Ebac says that by the end of the decade it was selling almost 100,000 dehumidifiers a year. Elliott was appointed MBE for services to small businesses, an honour Aycliffe Today dated to 1986.

Water coolers from the 1990s.

Water coolers arrived in the 1990s. Ebac says it launched its first watercooler in that decade, drawing on the design and manufacturing experience it had built on dehumidifiers; English Wikipedia dates the move into the water cooler market to 1993. The company says patents followed for its Smart Control system for dehumidifiers and for its Watertrail technology for coolers, and it describes the Watertrail as something it produces in the millions each year to drive its watercooler business. Those are the company’s own descriptions.

Ebac puts heavy weight on where it makes things. Its website says every Ebac product is made in the UK and that its manufacturing base has never moved from County Durham. It describes the business as highly vertically integrated: plastic parts moulded in house at a unit it calls BCM, sheet-metal work that includes the chassis for its watercoolers, electronic controls and circuit boards made by a unit called xCEL, and a 50-person “super line” that assembles both dehumidifiers and watercoolers. The company says it employs more than 250 people; Aycliffe Today put the workforce at the Aycliffe factory at 200 in 2012.

The range has widened and narrowed over the years. English Wikipedia lists refrigerators and freezers introduced in 2008 and later dropped, the purchase in 2013 of the assets of the Scottish freezer maker Icetech, including its Norfrost brand, and the start of washing-machine production in 2016. In April 2012 the press report already said Ebac made water coolers and air-source heat pumps and saw potential in building washing machines. In November 2023 Aycliffe Today described the firm as “known for manufacturing washing machines, water coolers and dehumidifiers,” and reported new domestic air-source heat pumps made at its Aycliffe Business Park premises, along with loft-mounted dehumidifiers with heat recovery.

Water at work.

Water dispenser makers sell into rooms that most people pass through without noticing: the office kitchen, the staff room, the school corridor, the gym lobby and the hotel back-of-house. Their brands have to work for two audiences at once. One is the person who fills a glass or a bottle several times a day; the other is the facilities manager, architect or procurement team who chooses the equipment, signs a rental or service contract and answers for it afterwards.

The product types shape how these companies present themselves. A freestanding or countertop cooler fed from the mains is usually shown as a tidy appliance in a bright workspace, often next to a choice of still, sparkling, hot or chilled water. An under-sink system is a different kind of sell: the boiler, chiller and filter sit out of sight in the cabinet, so the visible part of the brand is a slim tap on the bench, and the photographs tend to concentrate on its finish and profile.

Bottle-filling stations and drinking fountains bring the category into schools, universities, gyms and public spaces, where the language turns to refills, durability and easy cleaning. Here the brand appears on a sturdy wall unit rather than a kitchen fitting, and the messaging is aimed as much at the people who maintain it as at the people who use it.

Much of the selling still happens in person, at facility-management, building and hospitality trade fairs, in showrooms and through dealer and distributor networks. Many of the names in this field have also changed hands through mergers and acquisitions, so a brand’s history often runs through several owners, and its identity has to stay recognisable across catalogues, service vans and installer manuals in many countries.

A company that cannot be sold for profit.

Ebac’s ownership is unusual. In April 2012 Aycliffe Today, quoting The Northern Echo, reported that John Elliott would place the business in a trust instead of handing it on, so that its profits went into long-term manufacturing investment. The trust was to keep the firm in County Durham rather than relocate to cheaper parts of eastern Europe. Its trustees would not be allowed to sell the business for personal profit and would be charged with reinvesting profits and keeping it a manufacturer in south Durham, with a community trustee to oversee money distributed locally. English Wikipedia dates the transfer of ownership to 2011.

The company now calls the structure the Ebac Foundation. Its website says the foundation is charged with running Ebac Limited as a successful enterprise, that the business cannot be relocated anywhere other than County Durham, that all profits go into making it stronger, and that any surplus helps good causes in the local community. It quotes Elliott saying the change would not affect the day-to-day running of the business or its employees but would secure its manufacturing base in County Durham. Elliott stayed on as chairman: Aycliffe Today quoted him in that role in March 2024, when Ebac UK sponsored the Environment category of the Aycliffe Business Make Your Mark Awards.

Ebac’s main website today sells portable and loft-mounted dehumidifiers and laundry dryers directly to households, lists heat pumps, ventilation, industrial dehumidifiers and watercoolers among its business ranges, and links to a separate website for its water coolers.

For a design guide, Ebac shows how a plain acronym of a family firm’s name can carry a regional manufacturing story. Compare Cosmetal, the Italian cooler maker from Recanati, and Culligan, the water company from Northbrook, Illinois. For this guide we use a dark slate, a moss green and a pale stone grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Ebac’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.