| IQAir | |
| Type: | Private |
| Foundation: | Germany |
| Founders: | Manfred Hammes Klaus Hammes |
| Location City: | Goldach |
| Location Country: | Switzerland |
| Area Served: | Worldwide |
| Key People: | Frank Hammes Jens Hammes Glory Dolphin-Hammes |
| Industry: | Environmental technology |
| Products: | Air purifiers Air quality instruments |
| Num Employees: | ca. 500 (February 2020) |
IQAir is a Swiss air quality technology company, specializing in protection against airborne pollutants, developing air quality monitoring and air cleaning products.[1] IQAir also operates AirVisual, a real-time air quality information platform.[2] [3] As of February 2020, it had around 500 employees worldwide, 150 of them in China, and its most important markets were Asia and North America.[4]
IQAir was founded 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.[5] 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.[6]
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 Asia and the Middle East.[7]
IQAir currently has products in four product categories, namely air purifiers,[8] HVAC-based air cleaning, air quality instruments and the global air quality information platform AirVisual.
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 (AI) to calibrate and validate thousands of governmental and non-governmental air quality monitoring stations.
IQAir is headquartered in Switzerland with major operations in Germany, the U.S., and China. Product development is based in Switzerland.[9] 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.[10]