By Claire Reilly

As part of its cooking appliance offering for this year, Ilve has had a strong focus on built-in appliances. While the company has been forecasting product releases for some time, Current.com.au caught up with the Ilve’s marketing manager, Daniel Bertuccio, to talk about plans for its kitchen range and the exciting releases that are on the horizon.

“Our built-in range is a big focus for us,” Bertuccio told Current. “We’re definitely expanding our range, so there are some products that we’re looking at bringing out in September/October of this year. But out now we have the steam oven, the combination microwave, the pyrolytic oven, the built-in coffee machine and the pizza oven.

“There’s also another 60-centimetre oven coming out to match this range, which is not pyrolytic. So we’ll have our 60 pyro and then our normal electric oven. We’ll also be looking at bringing out a 90-centimetre pyrolytic oven hopefully by the end of this year, if not, then the beginning of next.

“There are not many around that are pyrolytic and that are 90 centimetres in size, so we’re very excited to get that out. And then once we get the 90s and the 60s sorted, we can look at the other sizes and then push that into the uprights.”

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Bertuccio also spoke about Ilve’s plans to bring out coordinating appliances that would offer consumers the option of piecing together different appliance combinations, while still staying within the same aesthetic framework.

“We’re looking at possibly getting a combination steam oven and microwave, which is not particularly ground-breaking, but it’s definitely something that merges two products into one. So that’s something exciting. And then we are looking at expanding our built-in 45-centimetre range to accommodate for things like a water and ice dispenser, and we’re also looking at possibly a wine fridge or wine cabinet.

“It’s important to have things like a built-in wine cabinet that matches the other appliances," he added. “We obviously know that not everyone is going to have a kitchen big enough to have more than two or three of those products, but the important thing is that they’re there, and they’re offered, and from those five or six you can choose two that you definitely want."

To read more about this year's biggest cooking appliance releases, turn to the August issue of Appliance Retailer magazine.