About Fisher & Paykel Ovens

In 2015, Fisher & Paykel was one of the oven brands rated in our Canstar Blue customer satisfaction survey. Here’s a brief rundown on Fisher & Paykel ovens.

The people behind the brand

Sir Woolf Fisher and Maurice Paykel started Fisher & Paykel Industries in New Zealand in 1934 as an importer of refrigerators. Maurice’s mum Olive wanted to import a refrigerator that she had seen in American Ladies’ Home Journal. When the refrigerators sold like hot cakes, they began importing washing machines as well.

They grew quickly until 1938, when the New Zealand government banned imports of manufactured appliances. Woolf and Maurice weren’t fazed. They began importing parts and manufacturing appliances locally in partnership with bigger companies like Kelvinator. Then they began designing their own appliances.

They even have their own YouTube channel where they have videos illuminating their latest technological innovations, including this one about the award-winning Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer™.

Fisher & Paykel’s design philosophy ‘refresh’, launched in 2010, is to build The Social Kitchen. As more and more homes revolve around a combined kitchen and dining area, their appliances cater for more people with less fuss.

When Fisher & Paykel started producing ovens

In 1955, Fisher & Paykel acquired the Dunedin cooking range manufacturer H. E. Shacklock Ltd, enabling them to begin producing ovens. With the benefit of Shacklock’s many years of experience since they began designing cookers in 1871, Fisher & Paykel was off to a running start.

Some Fisher & Paykel oven innovations

1960s: A major breakthrough in technology came when Fisher & Paykel realised they needed to be able to produce short runs of various models using common manufacturing equipment. So they learned to control flexible machinery lines. Then, together with the Japanese steel mills, they learned to manufacture appliance grade parts using pre-painted steel and coiled steel.

CookSurface™: Instead of your typical gas cooktop, where you have to lift off the pot stands before you can clean the surface of the cooktop, this technology has retractable trivets (pot stands). This innovation has won multiple design awards.

The perfect 60cm oven: Before larger capacity ovens were common, Fisher & Paykel saw a need and filled it. Customers were struggling to fit a large leg of roast lamb and a dish of potatoes in the oven at the same time, so they designed an oven with the largest internal cavity of the time, without compromising on cooking quality, evenness and efficiency. They invented ActiveVent™ technology to get rid of built-up moist air while keeping the heat inside the oven.

“We saw that the oven is the heart of the kitchen and that the kitchen is the heart of the home. It is no longer the room at the back of the house – it is the hub of social activity.” Lauren Palmer, Chief Designer

Kitchen Design Guide: Customers can sign up to download a free guide to creating or renovating your dream kitchen.

Online Cookbook: Customers can sign up to receive an online cookbook with stacks of healthy meal ideas.

Oven brands we rated

Canstar Blue commissions Colmar Brunton to regularly survey 3,000 Australian consumers across a Canstar Blue commissions third party research houses to regularly survey New Zealand consumers across a range of categories to measure and track customer satisfaction. The outcomes reported are the results from almost 1,600 New Zealanders.

The oven brands in this year’s survey are:

• DeLonghi
• Fisher & Paykel
• Bosch
• Parmco
• Samsung
• Simpson
• Smeg
• Westinghouse