Viessmann Generations Group Enters North American Foodservice Equipment Business

The German company acquired KPS Global earlier this year.

January 03, 2025

Viessmann Generations Group acquired KPS Global, a maker of custom enclosures for controlled environments such as walk-in coolers, in October. The acquisition marked Viessmann’s entry into foodservice-related equipment in North America.

With a central focus on sustainability and more environmentally friendly equipment, Viessmann describes itself as an “ecosystem of entrepreneurs and co-creators with a clear focus on CO2 avoidance, CO2 reduction and CO2 capturing.” Across all of its operating units, it employs more than 14,00 people, with almost half its annual 4 billion euros in sales coming from Germany.

At the time of the acquisition, Max Viessmann, CEO of Viessmann, said: “We look forward to expanding our Clean & Cold North America platform together with the experienced and proven KPS Global management team to grow within and beyond its core markets and drive value creation organically and inorganically, in line with our purpose of co-creating living spaces for generations to come.”

Max Viessmann, CEO of the Viessmann Group, and Mike Eakins, CEO of KPS Global, shared their take on the deal and what’s next for Viessmann with NACS Daily.

What Led to the Deal

Max Viessmann

“We are a 107-year-old family business. Our purpose is to co-create living spaces for the generations to come. And when we talk about living spaces, it’s not the living room, it's the city and the globe. Those living spaces are threatened right now by greenhouse gases, lack of air quality, lack of water availability and quality, and last but not least, by food availability, if we look at it from a global scale.

What we’re trying to do is address each of those fields through majority or minority investments. From a minority perspective, we are the largest private shareholder in Carrier, for example. Carrier Global being a market leader in air conditioning and HVAC means they have a major impact on greenhouse gases and air quality. … But then there are other places where we are doubling down on fields that we think we can maintain and build a regional, leading role in small- and medium-sized companies, and one of those fields that addresses greenhouse gases and food is walk-in coolers.

My family has been in the walk-in cooler business in Europe for the last 50 years. We have a market-leading position in Europe when it comes to those products. Our ambition has always been to also have a relevant footprint in America and perhaps grow from there. So when we learned about the opportunity to team up and partner with market-leading company KPS Global, we were very excited about it.”

Sustainability in the Space

Mike Eakins

“Historically, in the walk-in cooler industry in North America, sustainability was an afterthought at best. When we formed KPS Global almost 10 years ago, we said, we’re going to move this industry to where it’s a technology leader in cold and especially food safety, food preservation and energy reduction for our customers. And over the last few years, we’ve made great strides. We have numerous patents. One of our new products is a 100% recycled product and increases the R-value (the insulated value of our boxes and storage units) significantly, allowing our customers to use less energy to power those boxes. That product now represents 30% to 35% of our overall manufactured product volume.

Every one of our customers has very important sustainability goals, and those are energy use, food preservation, less food waste across the board and also utilization of recycled products. We’re working diligently to develop new products to help them meet those goals and reduce their carbon footprint.

One of our newer products uses a FUSIONFRAME panel that basically allows us to eliminate wood from the physical walk-in cooler or freezer. Most convenience and retail chains want to have what they call a structural insulated panel because they have very large boxes or refrigeration equipment on top of the boxes. Wood hardly has any R-value at all, and so by eliminating all that wood and having foam-to-foam contact with your panels, you’re significantly increasing the refrigeration value of your typical walk-in box. That allows the customer to control the temperature in that box much more closely to where you don’t have large temperature swings in the box.”

Viessmann’s Long-Term Goals

Max Viessmann

“It really depends on the businesses that we’re involved in. For cold rooms, that’s straightforward. We do have a 10-year perspective of where we would love to develop KPS Global towards organically, as well as where to round up the offering and the business model non-organically. There are many opportunities. We’re just following a clear goal path, organically and non-organically.

There are some other sectors that we are active in, mainly outside of the U.S., like heating and cooling networks, for example. Or indoor farming automation—that is a field where we have a bit of a footprint in America, but we think there is room for us to grow. If we grow non-organically, it’s usually teaming up with other family businesses or with co-owned companies where even the employees or the management have a relevant share, and we will just add to that. So there’s quite a mix of things that are all delivering on the same purpose.”