Gould 🇪🇸

If you have ever opened the cover of an 80s fan coil in a hotel or an office in Madrid, there is a good chance that the plate said Gould Aircoil. The company Gould Aircoil, S.A. was founded in 1965 and had its factory on the Extremadura road, kilometer 20,700, in Móstoles, where it manufactured air distributors and heat exchangers: that is, fan coils —ventiloconvectors, in the local jargon—, battery units and air‑treatment units, the components of the water systems that dominated Spanish commercial air‑conditioning before VRV.

The name reveals its genealogy. Gould Inc. was an American industrial conglomerate (batteries, electronics, components) that in the ’70s and ’80s had heat‑transfer divisions, and the Aircoil brand appears in the company’s advertising alongside another surname, Contardo, which refers to the Italian fan‑coil manufacturer. Otedisa itself, heir to the product line, summarizes the commercial sequence of its units as “Fan‑coil Contardo, Fan‑coil Gould‑Aircoil, Fan‑coil Otedisa.” The promotional items that still circulate among collectors—feathers and metal plates with “Gould Aircoil – Contardo – Móstoles”—are the most tangible testimony of that era. In 1984 and 1986 the BOE granted it the active improvement regime to import copper tube and aluminum strip and to export its batteries, a sign that it produced for markets outside Spain.

The corporate filing is in the Commercial Registry and does not fully match popular memory: on November 29, 1996 the dissolution of Gould Aircoil, S.A. was registered and on January 27, 1997 the global transfer of its assets and liabilities to its sole partner, Alfa Laval, S.A. The Swedish multinational of heat exchangers had taken over the Madrid company and absorbed it, shutting down the brand. The knowledge and the staff, however, went another way: the fan‑coil specialists from Móstoles continued in Otedisa, a few kilometers away, in Navalcarnero, which still manufactures today. That is why many technicians say that “Otedisa is Gould,” which is true as a product lineage although not as a legal succession.

Pending verification

The exact relationship with Gould Inc. (U.S.) and with Contardo (Italy), and the date when the company adopted the name Gould Aircoil; the date of incorporation (1965 according to Axesor; a collector's card says 1981); when Alfa Laval acquired 100 %.

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