DirectIndustry's 2026-06-06 manufacturer index for industrial heat pumps lists 41 companies and 197 catalog products, with European OEM names including Aldes, FRICK Industrial Refrigeration, Frigel Firenze, GEA Wiegand and EUROKLIMAT, alongside Chinese suppliers such as H.Stars (Guangzhou) Refrigeration and DanVex [S1].
Made-in-China.com's commercial air-source heat-pump directory, refreshed 2026-01-28, enumerates 366 manufacturers offering 1,098 products, with typical 1-piece MOQs and tiered pricing of US$1,420, US$1,730 and US$2,490 per piece across heating/cooling SKUs [S2][S7].
Manufacturer count and product depth on the two main B2B indexes
The 41/197 figures on DirectIndustry break out as a long tail of small catalogs: Aldes carries 4 listed products, Dantherm Group 16, EUROKLIMAT 6 and DanVex 6, while most others hold 1 SKU each, which is the structural pattern of a heat-pump supplier ecosystem dominated by regional assemblers rather than global OEMs [S1].
Made-in-China.com's commercial air-source index shows the opposite concentration: one featured manufacturer reports 11.7 million USD annual revenue, 143 employees, and an "Own Brand / ODM / OEM" R&D profile with sub-3-hour response time, against a background of 1,098 total SKUs [S7].
A factory-floor mini heat-pump search on 2024-08-19 returned only 2 manufacturers with 6 products (Guangzhou Xulexi Technology, Shanghai Shenling Environmental), with the Xulexi unit priced at US$1,078 per piece at 1-piece MOQ, evidence that low-capacity units remain a niche sub-segment of the broader air-to-water market [S5].
Price bands and what separates the tiers
Split air-to-water residential and light-commercial units from Made-in-China.com on 2026-06-16 cluster at 3.6 kW / 5.3 kW / 8.0 kW / 11.4 kW / 19.3 kW capacity steps, marketed as "factory supply" hot-water heat-pump systems with unspecified MOQ [S2].
Commercial system pricing on 2026-04-22 spans US$4,500–4,700 per piece at 1-piece MOQ from Diamond Member audited suppliers in Zhejiang, while higher-tier commercial air-source heating-and-cooling units on 2026-01-28 range US$1,420–2,490 per piece with MOQ ladders of 1 and 1,000 pieces [S6][S7].
Condensate heating pumps, a related but distinct SKU class, were listed 2025-12-02 at a flat US$2,000 per piece with 1-piece MOQ and 15-workday fast delivery from a 30-employee, 11,000 m²-class plant whose main product line is centrifugal chemical pumps, useful as a cross-check on what Chinese industrial-pump vendors actually export under the "heat pump" label [S8].
Technology fit: where each supplier cluster sits
Residential and pool/spa heat pumps (Zealux, 2026-06-19) target the consumer and light-commercial channel via specialist retailers, with product lines split into residential, pool & spa, and air/water categories [S4].
European HVAC-refrigeration specialists on DirectIndustry (Aldes, FRICK, Frigel Firenze, GEA Wiegand, EUROKLIMAT) sit in process-cooling and industrial-HVAC duty, with GEA Wiegand and FRICK specifically tied to ammonia and large-refrigeration plant markets rather than residential hot water [S1].
Ningbo-based heat-pump suppliers, indexed 2025-12-04, are concentrated on R32 and EVI low-temperature inverter air-to-water units in 16 kW / 18 kW classes with ErP A+++ / SCOP ratings at 7 °C/35 °C, and heating-capacity ranges of 5.8–18 kW, pointing to the dominant European-export specification window for Chinese ODMs [S9].
Comparison matrix: which supplier channel fits which buyer
European industrial OEMs (GEA Wiegand, FRICK, Frigel Firenze) are the right fit for buyers needing process-refrigeration, ammonia-cycle or hygienic cooling integration; the DirectIndustry index lists 1–4 products per vendor, which reflects engineered-project rather than catalog sales [S1].
Chinese air-source heat-pump ODMs (H.Stars, DanVex, EUROKLIMAT, the Zhejiang Diamond Member) are the right fit for buyers needing 1,000-piece MOQ price points in the US$1,420–2,490 band with OEM/ODM branding and sub-3-hour quotation turnaround, as listed on Made-in-China.com on 2026-01-28 [S7].
Residential brand-license players (Zealux) and small-MOQ mini-pump shops (Guangzhou Xulexi, US$1,078/piece, 1-piece MOQ, 2024-08-19) cover the consumer and prosumer channel where certification and dealer networks matter more than catalog depth [S4][S5].
Buyers who do not need European certification, do not run ammonia plants, and do not require distributor support should default to Chinese ODM channels; the trade-off is that quality control, after-sales service and refrigerant-track compliance (F-Gas for the EU, AIM Act for the US) remain buyer-managed, not vendor-managed.
Standards, refrigerant codes and what the catalogs do not tell you
The ErP A+++/SCOP rating shown on Ningbo air-to-water units (2025-12-04) references the EU Ecodesign directive framework for heat pumps, and R32 refrigerant is now the dominant low-GWP factory-fill across the Made-in-China.com split-system listings [S9].
None of the eight sources reviewed (DirectIndustry, Made-in-China.com product-search pages, Ningbo/Shanghai supplier pages, Zealux) publishes F-Gas or Kigali-compliance certification data per SKU; refrigerant charge size, leakage-rate class and disposal-chain compliance are buyer-side due-diligence items, not catalog fields [S1][S2][S3][S4][S6][S7][S8][S9].
Mini-pump and condensate-heating-pump catalogs on Made-in-China.com do not list ATEX/IECEx zone ratings even where the parent vendor supplies chemical centrifugal pumps, which means buyers sourcing heat-pump skids for hazardous-area plants must request the explosion-protection dossier separately, not pull it from the index page [S5][S8].
Sourcing gates: MOQ, audit tier and the Diamond-Member signal
The 1-piece MOQ pattern dominates residential and light-commercial SKUs (US$1,420 at 1 piece, US$1,730 at 1,000 pieces, US$2,490 at 1 piece on 2026-01-28), and the 1,000-piece MOQ on the mid-tier unit functions as a wholesale ladder rather than a true minimum [S7].
Made-in-China.com's "Diamond Member / Audited Supplier" badge (Zhejiang AMA&Hien, 2026-04-22, US$4,500–4,700) is the index's main third-party-verification tier and correlates with on-site audit reports covering legal status, production capacity and trading history, which is the closest substitute for a vendor audit a B2B buyer gets without paying for one [S6].
Shanghai's heat-pump supplier index (2026-04-03) leans into ancillary industrial equipment such as vacuum freeze-drying machines using Solvay Galden HT heat-transfer fluids, a niche where Chinese vendors overlap with European chemical-side supply chains rather than with residential HVAC [S3].
Limitations of the public supplier indexes
DirectIndustry's 41-vendor count under-counts European OEMs that sell direct (e.g., Bosch Thermotechnology, Viessmann, Daikin Europe) and over-counts white-label resellers, so the index is best read as a discovery funnel, not a market-sizing tool [S1].
Made-in-China.com's 366/1,098 figures cover only English-listed, paid-verified vendors, and exclude factory-direct inquiries that go through Alibaba 1688, WeChat mini-programs or domestic trade-fair channels such as the China Refrigeration Expo [S7].
For a fuller picture of upstream compressor, heat-exchanger and refrigerant supply behind these assemblers, the related coverage on heat pump upstream and downstream industries: component supply, system types and 2026 maps the component layer these 41+366 suppliers all draw from.
Trackable signals for the next sourcing window: (a) whether R290 (propane) factory-fill displaces R32 in the Ningbo 16–18 kW EVI class by end-2026, since R290 cuts GWP by an order of magnitude and is the regulatory direction the EU F-Gas revision has been signaling, and (b) how many of the 366 Made-in-China.com commercial air-source vendors add IECEx/ATEX hazardous-area documentation, because chemical-plant skid integrators will not buy without it, and the current indexes show none of the eight reviewed sources publishing it [S7][S9].
For component-level specifications, see heat detector, heat treatment furnace, and centrifugal pump.