IQAir is a Swiss air quality technology company, specializing in protection against airborne pollutants, developing air quality monitoring and air cleaning products. IQAir also operates AirVisual, a real-time air quality information platform. As of February 2020, it had around 500 employees worldwide, 150 of them in China, and its most important markets were

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

and

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

History

IQAir was founded in 1963 by brothers Manfred and Klaus Hammes, who introduced an air filter system for residential coal ovens in Germany to help reduce black dust build-up on the walls behind ovens. Manfred Hammes, a lifelong asthma sufferer, noticed that the filter reduced his flare-ups during the winter months. Klaus Hammes continued through the 1960s and '70s, to adapt the air filter for other heating systems such as radiators, baseboard heating and forced-air heating and cooling systems. In 1982, Klaus Hammes relocated the company headquarters to

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

. In the early 1990s, Frank Hammes, Klaus' oldest son, joined the company and expanded research and development as well as in-house manufacturing. In the spring of 1998, IQAir shipped its first high-performance air purifier from its Swiss factory. In 2001, Klaus Hammes' second son, Jens Hammes, joined the business and helped expand IQAir to

and the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

Products

IQAir currently has products in four product categories, namely air purifiers, HVAC-based air cleaning, air quality instruments and the global air quality information platform AirVisual.

Technology

IQAir employs a wide range of particulate and gas-phase removal technologies in its air purifiers and air filters. The company has been a vocal opponent of ionizing and ozone-producing air cleaning technologies. IQAir's air quality information platform uses

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI) to calibrate and validate thousands of governmental and non-governmental air quality monitoring stations.

Company organization

IQAir is headquartered in Switzerland with major operations in Germany, the U.S., and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. Product development is based in Switzerland. As of 2020, manufacturing is based in countries including Switzerland and Southern Germany. As of 2015, IQAir was family-owned and did not publish concrete information about its revenue or profits.

References

{{Reflist Technology companies established in 1978 Technology companies of Switzerland Environmental technology Consumer electronics brands Air pollution control systems 1963 establishments in West Germany German brands Swiss brands

History

Products

Technology

Company organization

See also

References