On 13 August 1948, the () granted the merchant August Heinrich Caspritz, who came from
Tolkemit, 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. After
bankruptcy in 1953, the factory was continued by
Horst Wolfgang Bentz under the name as part of the
Melitta group of companies. This was Melitta's response to the barely satisfied demand for coffee filters, as, after the
Second World War, Melitta's former
paper filter factory in
Kreuzau near
Düren had been destroyed and the
Concordia porcelain factory in
Sadov-Lesov (formerly ), which was used by Melitta between 1941 and 1945, was now located in the
Czechoslovakia. The factory site, which was 8.7 hectares in size at the time, was rented by Melitta employee Adolf Hagemann in March or October 1953. The production of porcelain and paper in
Rahling began in 1953. Melitta finally acquired the company premises for
DM in 1957. By 1954, the Rahling plant's product range already included
porcelain coffee filters, matching stoneware
coffee pots, large filters for the catering trade and
filter paper. Initially, up to 4 tons of filter paper were produced daily, but later production was increased to 20 tons. By the end of 1955, one million porcelain coffee filters had already been produced in Rahling. The plant subsequently developed into an important production site for the Melitta company. The director of the
Kunsthochschule Kassel, the designer , was a personal friend of Horst Bentz and had a great influence on the company's
marketing from the mid-1950s. Ernst not only developed the characteristic Melitta
word mark for Melitta, but also the green and red color concept for the packaging of the Melitta filter bags. In 1956, he introduced Melitta coffee table ceramics to complement the coffee filters and, from 1959, designed the
Ascona (form 4),
Zürich (form 5) and
Paris (form 21) coffee services. The first stoneware coffee service was produced in 1956, followed by the first porcelain service in 1958. The
Minden (form 1) stoneware service,
glazed in
pastel colors and derived from the "form 0" jug designed by Jupp Ernst, was a commercial success. During this time, filters were produced, some of which were color-coordinated with the coffee pot, and sold as a
Filka set ( & , filter & jug). From 1957, the company also produced doll dishes, which were offered as miniature versions of Melitta coffee filters and tableware series in various colors under the name Melitta
Kinder-Filter-Party, among others. The company began
expanding production at the end of the 1950s. On a newly installed casting line, up to porcelain coffee filters could now be produced per month in
three-shift operation. After the filter paper production was moved to
Minden in 1959, the company subsequently concentrated entirely on coffee service production. In the same year, the designer joined the company. Over the next 20 years, she designed numerous award-winning tableware services, including the
Helsinki,
Berlin (form 57),
Kopenhagen (form 25) and
Jeverland (form 59) series.
1960s onwards In the 1960s, the company set up its own design department for porcelain tableware, which Lieselotte Kantner headed, where she followed the company's principle '''' (form - colour -
use value) in her designs. 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. In the first half of the 1960s, over 1200 people worked in Rahling, the majority of them women. The product range was expanded in 1966 to include the production of dinner services. In 1969, the 25 millionth coffee pot in the
Minden series was produced. 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. The company took various rationalization and modernization measures to counteract this development. After the Melitta porcelain factory in
Rehau was closed, the
Rom (form 28),
Verona (form 56) and
Madrid (form 53) tableware series produced there continued to be produced in Rahling. In 1974, construction began on its own shipping and track hall for optimized shipping. After the rationalization measures were completed, around 700 people were still working in the factory in 1977. In the mid-1970s, the tableware collection was fundamentally revised. The two series
Jeverland (form 59) (porcelain service) and
Ammerland (form 63) ( service) were launched on the market. Both series were extremely successful and are still produced today. In 1978, the rustic,
fireproof cookware made of Ceracron came onto the market and also became a long-term commercial success. In addition to the fireproof cookware, a
cookbook was published in the early 1980s. 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). From 1979, the company operated as
Porzellanfabrik Friesland Bentz KG. In a second stage, the brand name
Friesland Porzellan was introduced in 1982. The new
marketing strategy included placing products in popular
women's magazines, including
Brigitte,
Bunte,
Journal für die Frau,
Freundin and ''
. Attractive celebrities were also used as advertising media, including Liselotte Pulver for the Lindau
(form 58) and Jeverland
(form 59) tableware services. In the mid-1970s, the company managed to win Luigi Colani as a designer. In 1974, he designed the black Ceracron for the company. It came onto the market in 1981. In 1984, the Life
(form 50 or 51) series by designer was introduced. Its design is reminiscent of the door handle that was popular at the time. The series is still produced today as Life Revival'' (form 51 or 54). At the end of 1987, Hans-Georg Peter, who had joined the company in 1958 and served as managing director since 1967/1968, handed over the business to Hans-Wilhelm Wiedei who had joined as managing director in May 1987. Peter subsequently retired in mid-1988.
Takeovers In 1991, Melitta sold 70 percent of the company shares. At that time, the company employed only 300 people. 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. In 1995, they also took over the remaining 30 percent of the company. However, losses in sales and company pensions from the Melitta era led to the company going bankrupt in 2004. At that time, only 175 employees were still working in Varel. A holding company
Friesland Porzellan GmbH with 85 employees was founded by Hinse, but could not prevent the company from going bankrupt again in 2005. The shareholder and managing director Uwe Apken took over the traditional company and restructured it as
Friesland Porzellanfabrik GmbH & Co. KG, initially with partner Albrecht Danne, later alone. In 2010, an
online shop was founded as
Friesland Versand GmbH.
Recent Apken concentrated the production on 17 series, including some with a long tradition, some of which are produced with new glazes and decorations. 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. A large part of the production is done by hand. The
Melitta filters were still part of the range, with an annual number of around units (). Coffee filters were Friesland's (first and) last product featuring the "Melitta" logo, but when Melitta started to produce a new variant of their coffee filters in China in 2018, Friesland switched to produce a slightly modified version of their former coffee filters under their own Friesland label. 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. Friesland Porzellan owns the brand name Ceracron. Furthermore, Friesland is the only factory in Germany that produces porcelain and earthenware under one roof. Since 2014, the company has been using a
3D printer to produce equipment for plaster molds needed for casting porcelain. The coffee and dinner services are sold in large department stores such as
KaDeWe,
Karstadt and
Galeria Kaufhof, and in parallel online. Numerous products are now in the inventory of domestic and foreign design museums, including the
Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts, the
Grassi Museum, Leipzig, and the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and have been shown at international design exhibitions, for example at the
Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich. 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". However, interims-management was taken over by his widow Jutta Over-Apken on 15 October 2018 and ultimately the closure could be averted. At the beginning of 2019, 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. In early 2020, Friesland secured the rights to the "" () brand, several product series, some forms and machines from the insolvent
Bayreuth-based
Porzellanfabrik Walküre. The aim was to strengthen their own position in the hotel and catering industry. 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". A new high-tech decor center utilizing machines from Walküre's former Bayreuth site was scheduled to be opened at the Varel site in May 2023. Half a million
euro were invested into the modernization of the heat distribution system,
exhaust systems and the main oven. In 2021, the
Royal Goedewaagen Group became the
Bornego Group, holding brands like Royal Goedewaagen (Niew-Buinen, Netherlands, founded in 1610), (
Antwerp, Belgium, founded in 1841), Albarello tegelfabriek & atelier / Dijkstra Friese Kleiwarenfabriek (
Sneek, Netherlands, founded in 1898) and Royal Tableware (
Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 2019) besides the Friesland Prozellan and Walküre brands (Varel, Germany). On the night of 29 June 2023 to 30 June 2023, seven warehouses on the Friesland Porzellan factory premises and production machines were completely destroyed by a
major fire. Almost all employees were subsequently laid off. Clean-up work began in mid-November 2023, with the 12 ha production site pending its reconstruction. ==Trivia==