Ariagel 🇮🇹

Ariagel is one of those Italian air‑conditioning brands that can still be seen on façades and in living rooms throughout Italy, but whose corporate history is difficult to reconstruct. What is documented is that it was a company specialized in climate control, with wall‑mounted splits and portable units, and that it passed into the hands of De'Longhi in 1987, just after the Treviso group launched its Pinguino (1986): the group’s economic chronicles describe the purchase as a way to “add the air‑conditioning expertise” of Ariagel to a manufacturer that until then had come from oil radiators and stoves.

Other Italian industry sources claim that Ariagel “has been part of the De'Longhi group since 2002,” a date that probably corresponds to a corporate reorganization rather than the original purchase. Since then the brand has coexisted with the parent company: the spare‑parts catalogs list common “De'Longhi / Ariagel” parts for portable units such as the Superclima or Mizushi, indicating that they shared technical platforms, and the brand’s official headquarters is listed as De'Longhi Appliances S.r.l., on Via Lodovico Seitz in Treviso.

Its most recent catalog (around 2014) relied on two families: wall-mounted climate units, including the ONH09 monoblock without an outdoor unit of 9,000 BTU with heat pump and R410A gas, and a range of lightweight portable units with purification filters. Today the brand barely has any visible commercial activity, although it survives in authorized technical assistance networks, spare parts stores, and in the memory of installers who mounted it during the nineties and two thousand.

In Spain

Ariagel is the Italian brand that brought the concept of portable air conditioning to Spain in the 1960s, and whose name would later end up in Interclisa Carrier's trademark register. A fold‑out catalog from the era, with the cover “Take the fierce summer out of combat with…”, presents “Ariagel, transportable climate: the only fully transportable air conditioner”, designed “with the aim of meeting the highest needs and demands for comfort, performance and decorative sense that every modern home requires”, “easily transportable, simple to operate and quick to install”. The photos show a floor console on wheels in a bedroom and in a living room, connected to a small external condenser: a mobile split avant la lettre. It was sold in Barcelona by the Laris store (Consejo de Ciento 383, Muntaner 110 and Paseo Maragall 74), and a press clipping advertised it as “Italian air conditioner”.

The brand is old in Italy and still alive: Ariagel has been part of the De'Longhi group since 2002 and today markets portable air conditioners without an outdoor unit, exactly the niche that arrived in Spain sixty years ago. At some later point, Interclisa —and later Interclisa Carrier— registered the name Ariagel in Spain among its product brands (alongside Brisa, Mistral, Nevada or Siesta), which suggests a distribution agreement or the purchase of the name for its portable range; the registration expired along with the others between 2010 and 2017.

For the enthusiast, an Ariagel from the ’60s is the first generation of the portable with remote condenser, and a piece that connects the Italian small‑climate industry with the Madrid‑based one of Guadalajara.

The “Ariagel air‑conditioning advertising catalogue, Glasier / Laris, 1960s” from todocoleccion (20.5 × 14.5 cm, three photographs) provides the headline “Take the fierce summer out of combat with…”, the description “Ariagel portable climate, the only fully portable air conditioner”, the text about “the most pleasant, fresh and pure environment” and the slogan “Ariagel is the fresh, portable wellbeing”, as well as the three Laris addresses in Barcelona. A “Ariagel advertising cut‑out, Italian air conditioner” confirms the origin. The current ownership by De’Longhi is listed on the Idroclimaterm portal, and the Spanish ownership of the brand by Interclisa Carrier is recorded in the Interclisa entry of this encyclopedia (expired registrations).

The photographs in the catalogue are, in themselves, a technical find: they show a floor‑standing vertical console, with wheels and a front grille, connected by a flexible cord to a small air condenser with fan that is placed on the balcony or window. It is the architecture of the two‑piece portable split, which Ariagel was already marketing in Italy in the ’60s and which in Spain coincided with Crolls’ “partido” and General Electric’s “separate units”. That it was sold by a shop like Laris, with three locations in Barcelona, and not by an installer, confirms that it was conceived as a plug‑in appliance, without installation work, for “every single room of your house”.

Pending verification

The founding year, place of origin, and founders of Ariagel have not been found; nor when it ceased to be actively marketed or whether it had official distribution in Spain. The purchase date (1987 versus “since 2002”) differs according to the source.

History machine-translated from Spanish. Can you improve it? Write to us.