Lékué’s own materials describe the company as both a designer and manufacturer, with products intended to simplify cooking while using durable, high-quality materials. 3

Origins: 1980

Lékué traces its beginnings to 1980 in Barcelona. Its early business was considerably different from the consumer brand people recognize today. The company initially manufactured silicone ice-cube trays, subsequently expanding into other silicone products for the kitchen. 4

This early experience with silicone became important because the material eventually became one of the defining characteristics of Lékué’s product range.

The transformation around 2005

The most important turning point came around 2005, when new investment and a new management team led by Xavier Costa helped transform Lékué’s strategy. The company moved away from primarily manufacturing products for other brands and began developing its own consumer-facing brand.

A design team led by Luki Huber, who had also collaborated with chef Ferran Adrià, contributed to this transformation. Lékué increasingly treated kitchenware as a combination of industrial design, usability, and culinary innovation, rather than simply as functional household equipment.

This period established much of the visual and strategic identity associated with modern Lékué.

Silicone is arguably the material most strongly associated with Lékué.

Traditional kitchen products had generally relied on materials such as metal, glass, ceramic, and rigid plastics. Lékué helped popularize the use of platinum-cured silicone in everyday cooking applications, particularly where flexibility, heat resistance, and easy handling were advantageous.

The company’s products demonstrated that silicone could be used for much more than simple baking molds. Applications included:

• Microwave cooking
• Steam cooking
• Baking
• Food preparation
• Food storage
• Kitchen utensils
• Containers
• Ice-making
• On-the-go food products

Lékué itself describes its use of platinum silicone as part of the company’s effort to introduce new cooking methods and materials into everyday kitchens.

One of Lékué’s most recognizable innovations is its Steam Case.

The concept is relatively simple: food is placed inside a flexible silicone cooking container, allowing it to be cooked using steam in a microwave.

This was important from a product-design perspective because Lékué wasn’t simply selling another microwave container. It was attempting to change the way people thought about microwave cooking—from primarily reheating food toward actually preparing fresh meals.

The company identifies microwave cooking and the Steam Case as an important part of its history and describes the product as having helped revolutionize microwave cooking.

The concept also fits neatly with Lékué’s broader philosophy: “Less time, fewer steps, healthier cooking.”

Lékué gradually expanded beyond individual silicone products. Its contemporary range covers several broad areas:

Cooking

Products designed for everyday cooking, including steam cooking and microwave preparation.

Baking

Silicone molds and baking accessories designed to make baking and releasing food easier.

Food Storage

Containers and systems intended to preserve food and organize the kitchen.

Food Preparation

Tools designed to simplify specific preparation tasks.

On-the-Go Eating

Products for transporting food and drinks outside the home.

Healthy Cooking

Products designed around steaming, portioning, simple preparation, and reducing unnecessary cooking steps.

The company describes its products as solutions for preserving, cooking, and transporting food.

Design is central to Lékué’s identity. Rather than treating design simply as decoration, Lékué’s approach tends to combine:

• Functionality
• Simplicity
• Ergonomics
• Material innovation
• Visual appeal
• Ease of use
• Space efficiency

The brand describes itself as a group of designers creating “unique and efficient solutions” to make cooking easier. This is one reason Lékué products often look quite different from conventional kitchenware.

A conventional product might ask: “How can we make a better container?”

Lékué’s approach is closer to: “How can we redesign this cooking process so the container itself makes cooking easier?”

That distinction is important to understanding the brand.

Lékué’s current positioning is summarized by its phrase: “Good Food Made Easy”.

The company says its objective is to inspire people to prepare tasty and healthy food easily, while making everyday cooking more practical. Its philosophy can therefore be summarized around four ideas:

• Healthy: Encouraging balanced, home-prepared food.
• Easy: Reducing complicated cooking processes.
• Innovative: Introducing new materials and cooking methods.
• Enjoyable: Making cooking something people can enjoy rather than a chore.

This is reflected in Lékué’s statement that cooking with the brand is not simply about following recipes, but about enjoying the entire process.

Sustainability has become increasingly important in Lékué’s positioning. Rather than focusing solely on replacing disposable products, the company emphasizes durable, reusable kitchen solutions and products designed to make food preparation and storage more efficient.

Its current communications specifically highlight sustainability alongside design and functionality as one of the pillars of the brand. The sustainability argument behind Lékué products can include:

• Reusable food-storage products
• Durable materials
• Reduced reliance on disposable kitchen products
• More efficient cooking methods
• Food preservation
• Products designed for repeated everyday use

However, it’s worth distinguishing the brand’s sustainability positioning from the environmental impact of every individual product. Silicone itself is not automatically environmentally superior simply because it is reusable; the actual environmental benefit depends on product lifespan, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal.

Although Lékué originated in Barcelona, it has developed into an international brand.

When Brabantia acquired Lékué, Brabantia stated that Lékué products were being sold in approximately 70 countries, with around 100 employees across its Barcelona operations and Suzhou factory at the time.

More recently, Lékué has described its distribution network as reaching more than 64 countries, while retaining Barcelona as an important center for marketing and innovation.

This gives Lékué an interesting identity: Spanish in origin and design culture, but international in distribution and market presence.

A major corporate development occurred in 2021, when Dutch household-products company Brabantia acquired Lékué.

Brabantia described Lékué as complementary to its existing portfolio and said the acquisition supported its strategy of building an international platform of household and interior-design brands.

Importantly, Lékué did not simply disappear into the Brabantia brand. The Lékué name and identity continued, while the relationship gave it access to Brabantia’s broader international distribution network.

In 2025, Lékué publicly described this as the beginning of a new phase of internationalization and innovation, with Barcelona continuing to serve as its marketing and innovation hub.

Design recognition has been an important part of Lékué’s brand-building strategy. The company has highlighted recognition including the Delta Award 2024, the iF Design Award, and the Solutions 2025 award associated with its Kefir & Yogurt Maker.

This reinforces an important distinction between Lékué and ordinary kitchenware manufacturers. The company competes not only on price + functionality but also on design + innovation + user experience.

A useful way of understanding Lékué is to compare it with traditional kitchenware companies.

This is probably the central idea behind the brand. Lékué does not merely manufacture kitchen objects. Its strongest products attempt to redesign a particular cooking activity.

Visually, Lékué has historically used a colorful, modern and approachable design language. The company’s products often use bright colors, soft/flexible forms, minimalist shapes, compact designs, visually distinctive silhouettes, and clear functional cues.

In 2025, Lékué introduced a renewed visual identity as part of its new international growth strategy. The company said the redesign was intended to make the brand clearer, more coherent, and more global while retaining its core identity.

A simplified Lékué product ecosystem looks like this:

• Cook: Microwave and steam cooking products, cookware and other everyday cooking solutions.
• Bake: Silicone baking molds and accessories.
• Prepare: Tools for preparing ingredients and meals.
• Preserve: Food-storage and preservation products.
• On the go: Products designed for transporting and consuming food outside the home.
• Fermentation & healthy food: Newer products such as yogurt and kefir makers reflect Lékué’s expansion into home food preparation and wellness-oriented cooking. Lékué specifically highlighted its Kefir & Yogurt Maker in its 2025 communications.

Lékué is particularly suited to consumers who want convenient home cooking, healthier meals, compact kitchen solutions, easy microwave cooking, baking without complicated equipment, reusable food-storage solutions, attractive kitchen products, and products that save preparation time.

Its proposition is especially relevant to modern urban lifestyles, where people may want to cook at home but have limited time, space, or specialized equipment. Lékué itself frames the modern cooking problem around the tension between wanting delicious, healthy food and having busy daily routines.

Lékué is strongly associated with Barcelona and Catalonia’s design culture. Its Barcelona origin is not just historical: the company continues to maintain its marketing and innovation functions in Barcelona.

This gives the brand a positioning somewhat comparable to other design-oriented Spanish companies: Mediterranean lifestyle + industrial design + practical innovation. The company therefore sits somewhere between a traditional cookware manufacturer and a contemporary lifestyle/design brand.

• 1980: Lékué begins operations in Barcelona, initially producing silicone ice-cube trays.
• 1980s–1990s: Expansion into additional silicone products and kitchen applications.
• 2005: Major strategic transformation; new investment, management and design direction help turn Lékué into a consumer brand.
• 2000s–2010s: Strong expansion of silicone cookware, baking products and innovative cooking solutions, including the Steam Case.
• 2010s: Internationalization and growing recognition as a design-oriented kitchenware brand.
• 2021: Brabantia acquires Lékué.
• 2024: Lékué receives design recognition including the Delta Award.
• 2025: Lékué launches a renewed brand identity and announces a new phase focused on internationalization, innovation, design, functionality and sustainability.
• Today: Lékué operates internationally as part of the Brabantia Group while retaining Barcelona as a key innovation and marketing center.

Lékué occupies a somewhat distinctive position. It isn’t primarily a premium cookware manufacturer like a traditional stainless-steel cookware specialist. Nor is it simply a mass-market plastic kitchen-accessory brand.

Instead, its positioning is closer to: Design-driven, innovative kitchenware for simpler and healthier everyday cooking.

The brand’s competitive advantage comes from combining product design + material innovation + cooking concepts + lifestyle branding. Its most successful products therefore tend to be products where the design itself changes how the consumer performs a familiar task.

As of 2026, Lékué is best understood as a Barcelona-originated international kitchenware brand within the Brabantia Group.

Its current strategy emphasizes three major pillars:

1. Design
2. Functionality
3. Sustainability

The company is seeking greater international reach while maintaining Barcelona as the heart of its marketing and innovation activities.

Its overarching consumer promise remains: Good Food Made Easy.

In other words, Lékué’s brand is ultimately about using design and innovation to remove friction from cooking—making healthy, good-tasting food easier to prepare, store and enjoy.

1. Brabantia acquires Spanish food enjoyment brand Lékué.
2. Lékué, la revolución en la cocina
3. About us – Lékué | LÉKUÉ
4. Press | LÉKUÉ