Friesland Porzellan
In 1982, they started to also manufacture under their own "Friesland Germany" brand,[nb 1] finally becoming independent of Melitta in 1995.
After several refirmations in the 2000s, Friesland Porzellanfabrik GmbH was taken over by the Dutch company Royal Goedewaagen [nl] in spring 2019.
On 13 August 1948, the Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Verkehr [de] ('Lower Saxony Ministry of Economics and Transport')[2] granted the merchant August Heinrich Caspritz,[2] who came from Tolkemit,[2] permission to build and operate a factory for the production of electrical porcelain, stove tiles and tableware on the site of a former anti-aircraft equipment depot.
[5] The factory site, which was 8.7 hectares[3][nb 2] in size at the time, was rented by Melitta employee Adolf Hagemann in March or October 1953.
The director of the Kunsthochschule Kassel, the designer Jupp Ernst [de], was a personal friend of Horst Bentz and had a great influence on the company's marketing from the mid-1950s.
On a newly installed casting line, up to 180000 porcelain coffee filters could now be produced per month in three-shift operation.
In addition to the designs by Jupp Ernst, Lieselotte Kantner and Karl Leutner, the appearance of the product range was shaped by the decorations of Claus Dombrowsky and Melanie Martens.
As a result of market saturation and increasing competition from abroad, sales of ceramic products in the Federal Republic of Germany began to stagnate in the early 1970s.
[9]: 15 At the same time, Melitta changed its corporate strategy and developed the factory in Rahling as an independent business area, with sales and shipping in-house (previously located in Minden).
The company was continued to be run as Porzellanfabrik Friesland GmbH by the two senior employees Hubertus Hinse and Klaus Müller via a management buyout.
[19][20] The shareholder and managing director Uwe Apken took over the traditional company and refirmed it as Friesland Porzellanfabrik GmbH & Co. KG, initially with partner Albrecht Danne, later alone.
[21][22] The company is also breaking new ground, for example by combining Friesland porcelain with other materials - such as walnut or maple wood - to create a tea service.
[26] The company's unique selling point, however, is the use of the particularly durable Ceracron, a mass of earthenware and stoneware developed in the 1970s.
[22] The coffee and dinner services are sold in large department stores such as KaDeWe, Karstadt and Galeria Kaufhof, and in parallel online.
[31] On 10 July 2018, less than a month before Apken's death, the management initially announced that it would cease operations in Rahling on 31 March 2019 due to ever-increasing costs for raw materials and the stiff competition from Asia for a company producing only "Made in Germany".
At the beginning of 2019,[35] the management announced that Friesland Porzellanfabrik GmbH & Co KG had merged with the Royal Goedewaagen Group, based in Nieuw-Buinen, Drenthe province, Netherlands, to form the RGW Friesland Porzellan Group and, under the lead of Righard Aldert Atsma since 22 January 2019, that the site would remain one of four sites of the new company.
[35][37][38][39] Some of the former Walküre products, including the Karlsbad and Bayreuth coffee makers, were since manufactured at the Varel factory using the porcelain mark "FPM".
[51] Clean-up work began in mid-November 2023,[52] with the 12 ha[53][33][34][54][nb 2] production site now[update] pending its reconstruction.
