The Great Centralisation: Are Mergers in the UK Heating Industry Beneficial or Detrimental?

Helping YOU find good heating engineers. We share case studies from engineers in the Guild of Master Heat Engineers to help people find top installers, help gas and oil engineers increase their knowledge around heat pumps, and provide a solution for third-sector professionals to understand the industry better.

Editors Note

BetaTeach exists as an independent voice in the UK heating sector. That independence matters at a time when ownership, platforms and influence are becoming increasingly concentrated. Because BetaTeach is not owned by a manufacturer, events group or platform operator, it can explore questions others often avoid. Many of our readers influence policy as well as practice, and this article is written with both audiences firmly in mind.

Are Mergers in the UK Heating Industry Beneficial or Detrimental?

On 23 December 2025, Paloma Rheem, the parent company of Intergas, signed an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Groupe Atlantic. At first glance, this looked like another routine consolidation deal in a mature industry. In reality, it marked a significant moment in the continuing centralisation of the UK heating sector.

Groupe Atlantic owns Ideal Heating, a brand that has consistently occupied a top position in UK boiler sales across domestic and commercial markets. With this acquisition, Ideal now sits alongside Intergas, the Dutch manufacturer widely known for high efficiency gas boilers, within a single global group. This remains noteworthy even as the industry pivots toward low carbon technologies.

This deal followed Carrier Global’s €12 billion acquisition of Viessmann Climate Solutions in 2024. That move brought together Viessmann, Riello, Toshiba HVAC and Vokèra under one corporate umbrella. Taken together, these transactions signal the arrival of the HVAC super major.

The simplest interpretation is that bigger means better. Larger firms bring capital, research capability and scale, which are all needed to meet Net Zero ambitions. However, as journalist Amanda Ripley argues, the most important stories are rarely simple. To understand what consolidation really means for the heating industry, we must complicate the narrative.

Paloma Rheem Acquisition History

Groupe Atlantic Brand Acquisition & History

Consolidation Is Not New

Before treating today’s mergers as unprecedented, it is worth remembering that consolidation has been a defining feature of the UK heating sector for decades.

In 1996, Robert Bosch acquired Worcester Heat Systems. The result was Worcester Bosch, a merger of German industrial scale with one of Britain’s most trusted boiler brands. Far from weakening Worcester’s position, the acquisition strengthened it, creating a market leader that shaped installer culture, training and brand loyalty for a generation.

In 2009, BDR Thermea was formed through a major European merger. The Baxi Group, which had already absorbed historic British names such as Potterton and Main, joined forces with De Dietrich and Remeha. This created a multi brand group that has since operated successfully across distinct national identities while centralising engineering, manufacturing and strategy.

These examples matter because they remind us that consolidation itself is not the issue. The sector has lived with global ownership for years and often benefited from it.

What makes this moment different is not simply the scale of consolidation, but the breadth of technologies now sitting within the same corporate structures. Many of today’s super hubs own both established gas boiler brands and expanding heat pump portfolios. This creates a strategic tension at the heart of the Net Zero transition. When the same organisations profit from legacy combustion technologies while also steering low carbon alternatives, the pace and direction of change are shaped by internal incentives as much as external policy. Whether this dual ownership ultimately accelerates the transition or quietly moderates it remains an open question for the sector.

A Sector Organised Around Global Parents

Ownership in the heating sector is no longer primarily about competition between individual brands. It is increasingly about a small number of global parent companies shaping strategy across multiple labels.

Paloma Rheem now brings together Intergas, Ideal Heating and ACV UK. Carrier Global has assembled a premium portfolio that includes Viessmann, Riello, Toshiba HVAC and Vokèra. BDR Thermea continues to operate a multi brand European model with Baxi, Potterton, Main, Remeha and De Dietrich.

What distinguishes the current phase is density. More brands, more technologies and more routes to market are now coordinated within fewer corporate structures. This creates efficiency, but it also concentrates decision making in ways the industry has not previously experienced.

From Crystal Palace to the Super Platform

Consolidation is not limited to manufacturing. The marketplace itself has followed a similar path.

The first major national platform for British heating and electrical innovation can be traced back to the Crystal Palace Electrical Exhibition of 1891. It served as a focal point where technology, installers and manufacturers met in a shared physical space.

For much of the late twentieth century, the biennial Interbuild exhibition at the NEC became the industry’s primary hub. It was broad, dominant and influential, until it gradually faded as the sector grew more specialised and fragmented.

Today, the pendulum has swung back toward centralisation. Nineteen Group’s growth through InstallerSHOW, PHEX, HVP and the acquisition of Oliver Kinross has created a powerful international events and media hub spanning the UK, Europe, North America and Australia.

This matters because platforms shape attention. When marketplaces consolidate, so does influence.

Why Consolidation Appeals to Policymakers and Industry Leaders

Supporters of consolidation argue that scale is not inherently harmful. Legal scholars such as Herbert Hovenkamp and economists such as Joshua Wright have long argued that mergers should be judged on outcomes rather than size alone.

In heating, these arguments resonate. Large groups can invest heavily in research and development. They can stabilise supply chains. They can fund national training infrastructure and digital support tools that smaller firms struggle to maintain.

Carrier’s acquisition of Viessmann can be used as an example of this logic in action. Viessmann’s engineering heritage combined with Carrier’s global reach arguably accelerates the rollout of low carbon heating technologies at scale.

Seen through this lens, consolidation looks like coordination rather than domination.

An Optimistic View from Inside the Super Hub

This optimism is shared by some of the most experienced observers within the industry itself.

Andrew Gaved, a highly respected trade journalist at Nineteen Group and one of my personal favourites in the sector, offered a thoughtful response when I previewed this article. His perspective is grounded in long experience across adjacent industries.

Drawing on construction equipment, Andrew pointed out that companies such as Caterpillar, Case New Holland and Terex became global full range players through acquisition, while smaller companies thrived by specialising. He observed that a similar pattern has played out in cooling, where Daikin, Carrier and Mitsubishi Electric have grown significantly while independent specialists have retained innovation and identity.

He also highlighted JCB as a company that chose organic growth over acquisition and continued to innovate successfully by leveraging its strengths. His conclusion seems clear. Consolidation challenges those caught in the middle, but history suggests it does not eliminate independent innovation.

That view matters. It reminds us that consolidation does not automatically extinguish diversity.

Why Critics Remain Concerned About Scale

Amanda Ripley’s approach requires us to hold that optimism and then look again.

Thinkers such as Barry Lynn of the Open Markets Institute and Tim Wu, author of The Curse of Bigness, argue that extreme consolidation changes behaviour in subtle ways. Large organisations often become cautious not because they lack ambition, but because they have existing capital, infrastructure and product lines to protect.

In heating, this raises legitimate questions. Do global groups have sunk costs in gas technologies that slow more disruptive change. Are smaller innovators squeezed out not because their ideas are weak, but because access to installers, platforms and training ecosystems becomes harder.

These concerns are structural rather than personal. They focus on systems rather than intentions.

Gatekeepers and the Power of Platforms

Former US Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan reframed how competition is understood by shifting attention away from prices alone and toward gatekeeper power. Her argument was that control over infrastructure, distribution and access can matter as much as traditional measures of market share.

In the heating sector, gatekeepers increasingly include platforms. Trade shows, installer communities, training academies and media ecosystems influence which technologies, narratives and voices gain visibility, and which are marginalised. These structures shape not only attention, but legitimacy and access to opportunity.

The growth of large, consolidated industry platforms has changed how information circulates and where debate happens. Routes to exposure, training and commercial engagement are increasingly mediated through a smaller number of organisations, concentrating influence over agenda setting and normalisation.

At the same time, social media has disrupted this concentration of control. Platforms such as LinkedIn, YouTube and specialist forums have created parallel pathways for engineers, educators and commentators to build authority directly with peers, policymakers and manufacturers.

This shift has enabled independent voices, including educators and platforms such as BetaTeach, to exert influence based on evidence, experience and credibility rather than organisational scale or institutional alignment alone.

Training as the Hidden Fault Line in Consolidation

Training is where consolidation has some of its most profound and least examined effects.

At scale, large organisations can fund national training networks. Ideal Heating’s Expert Academy, now operating more than 30 UK locations* represents a serious investment in skills development. Capacity, however, is not the same as learning effectiveness.

Much of the training and assessment across the industry is not evidence based. This includes manufacturer training, independent provision and even awarding organisations.

Modern learning science has been well established for decades. Richard Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning shows that people learn better when information respects the limits of working memory.

Yet heating training still relies heavily on dense slides, lecture led delivery and multiple choice assessment. These persist because they are easy to standardise, not because they work.

(editors Note: I was shocked to find this out. I’ve tried to fact check as much as possible. I know people involved in the Ideal training world, good people, but did not want to disturb them during Christmas and New Year break to ask)

When Scale Amplifies Weak Models

Centralisation magnifies whatever model it scales.

If training design is strong, consolidation can rapidly improve competence. If training design is weak, consolidation industrialises the problem.

The risk is the normalisation of narrow competence. Engineers become fluent in brand environments while losing confidence in system level reasoning and fault diagnosis.

In a Net Zero transition that demands adaptability and judgement, this matters.

The Role of Independent Educators and The Guild of Master Heat Engineers

Independent educators such as Heat Geek and Kimbo Betty* act as a necessary counterweight. (Editors Note: Kimbo’s academy was acquired by Warmur. As yet I’ve not had the opportunity to visit a training session to see what they are now like)

Organisations such as the Guild of Master Heat Engineers and platforms like BetaTeach operate outside manufacturer constraints. This allows them to design education around outcomes rather than audit convenience, and to apply evidence based instructional design.

Learning quality does not emerge from scale alone. It emerges from intent.

Independents and Authority on the Ground

Ownership in the heating sector is concentrating, but authority is not.

Independent engineers now shape discourse directly through social platforms. Their lived experience of commissioning, failure and performance increasingly informs policy debates.

As Tim Wu and Rebecca Giblin have observed elsewhere, when markets centralise, trust often decentralises.

Conclusion

Efficiency, Resilience and the Balance Between Them

So are mergers in the UK heating industry beneficial or detrimental.

The answer is both.

Consolidation can deliver capital, coordination and speed. Independents, specialists and mavericks provide realism, innovation and resilience.

If super majors provide the engine, independents provide the steering and the early warning signs.

The future health of the UK heating sector depends not on choosing between scale and independence, but on maintaining the balance between them.

That balance, more than any single acquisition, will determine whether the industry becomes merely efficient or genuinely resilient.

Thanks to Patrons

(we have a new Patron onboard: ESBE. They manufacture the specialist valves used by many of the Guild Engineers. There logo will be included soon)

Learn more about our Patrons here.

Nathan

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