Robam Appliance's Ren Fujia Sucesds Founder Father as Chairman, Compleing Second-Generation Handover

On August 18, Robam Appliance convened a temporary shareholders' meeting to elect a new board of directors. Ren Fujia, aged 43, succeeded the 70-year-old founder Ren Jianhua as chairman of the new board, also assuming the role of general manager. Ren Jianhua has stepped down from the listed company's board. With this change, the chairmen of the three major Chinese kitchen appliance listed companies—Robam Appliance, Vatti Corporation, and Vanward Electric—are now all from the second generation of their founding families. Fotile Group has long been led by Mao Zhongqun, who co-founded the company with his father in 1996 and has served as chairman since then.

Ren Fujia joined Robam Appliance in 2006, holding positions such as product manager in the marketing department, deputy general manager of the R&D center, vice chairman, deputy general manager, and general manager. Since 2013, he has served as general manager, overseeing daily operations. In 2025, Robam Appliance generated revenue of RMB 10.116 billion, down 9.77% year-on-year; net profit attributable to shareholders was RMB 1.256 billion, down 20.38%. In the first quarter of 2026, the company's revenue was RMB 1.963 billion, down 5.45% year-on-year, while attributable net profit was RMB 307 million, down 9.81%.

Fotile Group's 2025 revenue reached RMB 17 billion. At Vatti, Pan Yejiang was elected chairman in 2015 and currently holds 15.4% of the company's shares. Vanward Electric appointed Lu Yucong as chairman in 2022; at the end of that year, he resigned as president, handing the role to professional manager Lai Yuwen, who left in November 2025. Subsequently, Lu Siyi, a member of the Lu family, was appointed as rotating president.

During this board re-election, Zhou Haixin, deputy general manager and head of AI digital kitchen appliances at Robam, joined the board, and Zheng Xiaolin, a professor at Zhejiang University's School of Artificial Intelligence, was appointed as an independent director. In 2026, Robam Appliance made a strategic investment in Youtai Zhichu, a smart cooking robot company, with an investment amount in the hundreds of millions of RMB, aiming to expand AI cooking capabilities into commercial scenarios.