Embraco Brand Guidelines: Joinville Compressors From 1971, Whirlpool, Then Nidec

A Brazilian answer to imported compressors.

Embraco is short for Empresa Brasileira de Compressores, the Brazilian Compressor Company. Portuguese Wikipedia dates its founding to 10 March 1971 and names three refrigerator manufacturers as its founders: Consul, Springer and Prosdócimo. Their aim was to replace imported compressors with ones made in Brazil. English Wikipedia makes the same point, saying Brazil’s refrigeration industry had until then relied entirely on imported compressors, and that Embraco was set up to supply it.

The company took the city of Joinville, in the southern state of Santa Catarina, as its home, and it is still there. Embraco’s own site lists Joinville as the global headquarters of the business it now belongs to, with a compressor factory and a foundry nearby, and a further plant at Itaiópolis in the same state that makes compressor components and assembles refrigeration systems.

The early years drew on outside technology. Portuguese Wikipedia says the first compressor came off the line on 6 September 1974, built with technology from the Danish company Danfoss. In 1976, the same article says, Embraco joined the Brasmotor group, and it started exporting in 1977. English Wikipedia says exports to other countries in the Americas began a few years after the factory opened, and that by the 1980s the sales and distribution network reached more than 80 countries.

Portuguese Wikipedia marks 1987 as the year Embraco launched its first compressor built with its own technology, thirteen years after the first Danfoss-based unit.

From Brasmotor to Whirlpool to Nidec.

In the 1990s the company went abroad. English Wikipedia says Embraco chose to set up production bases overseas in anticipation of a global economy, and Portuguese Wikipedia lists the steps: control of the Italian compressor maker Aspera in 1994, a joint venture in China called Embraco Snowflake Compressor Company in 1995, and a plant in Slovakia in 1999.

The Italian story is told differently in the Italian press. The daily Il Post, in February 2018, said the factory at Riva presso Chieri, near Turin, was built in the 1970s by Fiat Aspera, Fiat’s refrigerator division; that Fiat sold Aspera to Whirlpool in 1985; and that Whirlpool passed the plant to Embraco in 2000. The same report dates the opening of a Slovak plant to 2004, against Wikipedia’s 1999.

Ownership moved north. English Wikipedia says Embraco had been a Whirlpool Corporation business unit since 1997, and Portuguese Wikipedia says that from 2006 it operated in Brazil under the corporate name Whirlpool S.A., after a union with Whirlpool’s Brazilian appliance company. In 2014, English Wikipedia says, Embraco announced linear compressors that it claimed were more compact than other compressors and ran without oil.

The Turin plant closed under Whirlpool. Il Post reported in February 2018 that Embraco had decided to move its refrigerator compressor production from Riva presso Chieri to Slovakia, and that close to 500 workers had received letters announcing collective dismissal, a decision the Italian industry minister contested. English Wikipedia says the factory closed in 2018, with a business office left in Turin.

In April 2018 Whirlpool agreed to sell Embraco to the Japanese motor maker Nidec. The British trade title ACR Journal reported on 2 July 2019 that Nidec had completed the purchase after antitrust approval, having agreed to sell its Secop compressor business as a condition of the European Commission’s clearance. Embraco and its subsidiaries in Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Russia, Slovakia and Italy became part of Nidec Global Appliance, the magazine said.

Cases, towers and cut-aways.

Refrigeration is a trade that sells equipment most people only half notice, and its makers tend to picture it where it works. Supermarket case makers show long runs of cabinets, glass doors catching the aisle lights and the shelves stretching away down the frame. Cooling tower makers go up to the roof and shoot their steel boxes against open sky.

Compressor makers work closer in. Their catalogues favour the cut-away: a casing sliced open with the copper, windings and pistons labelled, part engineering drawing and part sales picture. Coil makers go closer still, with condensate beading on fins and tubes in tight rows. Beverage cooler makers have a different job, because the cabinet is also an advertisement, so the photograph often sits on a shop floor with a drink brand’s name on the door.

Much of the category’s public life happens at trade fairs. Chillventa in Nuremberg is the refrigeration industry’s own show, EuroShop in Düsseldorf is where retail fittings meet retail design, AHR Expo moves between American cities for the heating, cooling and refrigeration trades, and Mostra Convegno Expocomfort in Milan covers heating, plumbing and cooling. At these shows the stand does the work of the brand book: a unit opened up, a logo at full height, model names on the panels.

That naming is a habit worth noticing. Ranges are usually identified by letters and numbers, written for engineers who read specification sheets, so a memorable product name or a founding story stands out. The guides here set out what can be checked about each one: who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made.

“One Brand, All Climates.”

Today Embraco is a brand rather than a separate company. Its website describes Nidec Global Appliance as a platform of a Nidec business unit for appliance, commercial and industrial motors, and says its portfolio includes Embraco and U.S. MOTORS products for refrigeration, heating, ventilation and air conditioning. By the company’s own count, Nidec Global Appliance has about 12,400 employees and 19 manufacturing plants in nine countries. The product menu runs from reciprocating compressors at fixed and variable speed to scroll compressors, controllers, air-movement parts and complete cooling systems, sorted by uses such as food retail, food service, merchandisers and residential refrigeration.

In July 2025 the company announced that Nidec Global Appliance had bought the scroll compressor maker Xecom, taking Embraco into heating and air conditioning under the line “One Brand, All Climates.” The release lists cold rooms, heat pumps, rooftop chillers and packaged units among the uses for scroll compressors from 1.2 to 35 horsepower.

At Chillventa 2026, according to a September 2026 release, the brand showed the Embraco Pulse scroll compressor with digital capacity modulation, the Sync it All Pro family, in which a controller, fan pack, software and inverter are designed to work together, and the Bioma+ condensing unit for cold rooms. Sync it All, the company says, is a portfolio of components built to work in synchrony so equipment makers can develop products more easily.

For a design guide, Embraco shows how a component maker’s name can stay constant through three owners, from a Brazilian group to an American appliance company to a Japanese motor maker. Compare Nidec, its parent since 2019, and Danfoss, whose technology went into its first compressor. For this guide we use a Joinville blue and a pale frost with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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