The launch of AGA Total Control was the culmination of a seven-year development programme. Under it we have reassessed the nature of the AGA cooker, the manufacturing process used to produce it and its sustained relevance in today’s economic and environmental climate. The objective set was to create a new generation of products with international sales potential.

AGA Total Control – “On when you need it, off when you don’t” – has immediately captured consumer imagination and is expected to be a major driver of sales of the AGA Rangemaster Group.

The development of AGA Total Control has led to the introduction of a range of new manufacturing processes in both our Coalbrookdale foundry and our Telford enamelling and manufacturing facilities, with the result that the AGA is now largely factory built rather than assembled in the customer’s home.

The AGA to date has had a single heat source managing all the ovens. Now with AGA Total Control the individual ovens and hotplates have their own heat sources and so can be separately controlled with far shorter heat up times. We have now both a touch-screen control panel in the AGA and a remote controller from which the timings of the AGA can be managed over a weekly cooking cycle. We are currently working on creating an AGA ‘App’ which will mean that consumers will be able to use a mobile phone to turn their AGA on and off. 

Engineering ovens is a well-established theme for us. It was in 1830 at our existing Leamington Spa facility of Rangemaster that the Group first produced a cooker with a single heat source providing heat for separate ovens – and for the first time having the cooking pot not in direct contact with the heat source – in essence inventing the modern cooker.

The energy consumption of the AGA has been a major consideration in the development programme. AGA Total Control offers consumers the flexibility to have the cooker on to cook as required, to provide gentle background warmth and to provide a myriad of other functions that AGA is famous for, but to be switched off at all other times. These developments enable owners to dramatically reduce energy costs. AGA Total Control can operate using less than a fifth of the energy of the current electric equivalent.

We continue to examine ways in which the heat-retention qualities of the cast iron in an AGA can be used to best effect with heat in the kitchen offsetting the cost of heating with radiators. This is the subject of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership which we are currently undertaking with Birmingham City University.

There are further development opportunities for the electric AGA. The heat retention qualities of a cast iron AGA can essentially be a battery. We are enthusiasts for the idea that electricity can be economically produced and stored at the domestic point of use. Our first AGA Rayburn Energy Management Centre is in Kidderminster and there we sell photovoltaic systems to consumers wishing to generate renewable energy and benefit from the ‘Feed In Tariff’.

We consider that the flexibility of the AGA Total Control; that it is powered by electricity rather than oil or gas; that it is largely factory built and easy to install means that it is by far the most readily exportable AGA there has been.

David Ogilvy, the key figure in modern advertising, was the first AGA salesman and throughout his career loved the product above all others. He first took AGA to the USA in the 1930s. He would have relished the challenge now to make AGA a major export line – now possible given the new generation of products.

The foundry where AGA and Rayburn are made is part of a World Heritage Site in Coalbrookdale - largely made up of land contributed by the AGA Rangemaster Group. The site also contains the first iron bridge developed by Abraham Darby III. The foundry has been systematically upgraded to modern standards. Our foundry and factory in Telford, where our products are enamelled and assembled, together employ around 500 people out of the Group’s 2,500 employees.

At AGA Rangemaster we are proud of our manufacturing tradition. That our foundry is where Abraham Darby first smelted iron ore with coke in his pursuit of greater efficiency for his cooking pot operations – which we still continue on site – is a source of great pride. That we are still using the same site in support of current development is remarkable testament to the tradition of innovation and design of the UK and of the Midlands, in particular.

 To find out more about this company, visit www.agarangemaster.com