Our mission

For over 160 years now, we have been striving to offer solutions for water supply and disposal at our Mannheim-Friedrichsfeld site. Over the last two decades, we as a company have become part of Aliaxis, an internationally integrated, family-owned group that meets the challenges of our time. We owe this above all to our customers. You are the driving force behind our success and your support has helped us to continuously develop. Your needs are at the centre of everything we do and we pride ourselves on offering innovative solutions that are tailored to your individual requirements. Together, we will continue to meet the challenges of our time in the years to come.

Our beginnings

Since our foundation in 1863, Aliaxis Mannheim has pursued the goal of improving people's lives and driving progress in water supply and disposal with our products. The Mannheim soap manufacturer Otto Reinhard founded the Rheinhard'sche Ziegelwarenfabrik, which was taken over ten years later by Julius Friedrich Espenschied. From this point onwards, the company produced particularly resistant clay pipes under the name ‘Portland Cementfabrik’ for the water and sewage supply. The expansion and modernisation of the sewerage systems in the cities brought the company healthy growth, and from 1895 it also conquered the international market.

In the 20th century

From the 1920s onwards, our focus was on developing new products and modernising our plants. The further development of chemical stoneware opened up new sales markets such as the food, textile and colour industries. In the middle of the century, the demand for clay pipes increased steadily due to the ongoing construction boom. In order to expand, we added other materials such as PVC and polyethylene to our portfolio around 1960. These were still ‘special materials’ at the time.

Strong together: Aliaxis

In order to continue its healthy growth, FRIATEC AG became part of the Aliaxis Group in 2003, one of the world's largest manufacturers of plastic piping systems for industry, construction and utilities. At that time, the Mannheim site consisted of four main business divisions: Ceramics, Pumps, Building Technology and Engineering Plastics.

The connection to our parent company and other companies should also be more visible to our Aliaxis customers. This is why FRIATEC GmbH became Aliaxis Deutschland GmbH in 2019.

Through the sale of the Pumps and Ceramics divisions and the merger with independent industrial activities with the FIP brand, we have focussed on plastic piping systems related to our core business in connection technology, including electrofusion technology under the FRIATEC brand.

To this day, environmentally friendly production and sustainability are important cornerstones of Aliaxis' corporate culture.

Today - more than 20 years later - we are proud of our successful entrepreneurial path and can offer our customers durable and sustainable products and services for improved water and energy supply, as well as advanced and versatile industrial piping systems.