Foron
Foron was the brand name of a manufacturer of household appliances ("white goods") in the German Democratic Republic and Germany.
history
Foron was created in the GDR as a trademark for the products of VEB Kombinat Hausgeräte Karl-Marx-Stadt , to which 28 plants were assigned. Among other things, two companies in the Erzgebirge belonged to the combine , the VEB Waschgerätewerk Schwarzenberg (emerged from the Krausswerke Schwarzenberg ) and the VEB dkk Scharfenstein .
The Krausswerke Schwarzenberg were founded in 1887 by Louis Krauss in Neuwelt near Schwarzenberg . 1902 succeeded Krauss an invention that marked the international breakthrough for the company: the first steam - washing machine in the world in all-metal design. Within the next four years, this hand-operated and coal-fired original “ System Krauss ” sold over 80,000 times. In the following years the company grew into one of the leading metal processing companies. Another worldwide success was the all-metal washing machine “ Turna ”, which came onto the market in 1935 and could be heated with gas, coal or even electrically.
The " Zschopauer Motorenwerke J. S. Rasmussen AG" ( DKW ) took over the Scharfenstein plant of the Chemnitz mechanical engineering company Moll. Initially, the company concentrated on the production of small refrigerators - at that time a market niche in Germany. A household and commercial refrigerator was presented for the first time as early as 1929. The trademark "DKW -kühl" became a worldwide term and in 1931 the DKW subsidiary "Deutsche Kühl- und Kraftmaschinen GmbH" (DKK) entered the commercial register as an independent company . In 1933, the first refrigerator with a built-in refrigeration unit ( compression refrigeration machine ) was developed.
The Second World War, however, brought the success trend of both companies to a standstill, followed in 1945 by the expropriation of the factories and dismantling to repair the war damage.
The successor of the Krausswerke was the "VEB Waschgerätewerk Schwarzenberg" in 1948: After resuming production, it became a GDR monopoly and the most important manufacturer of washing machines in Eastern Europe. Most recently, around 3,000 employees in the plant produced 520,000 devices annually.
In the meantime, the "VEB dkk Scharfenstein" started the series production of household refrigerators. Due to the increasing number of units, another plant was inaugurated in 1955, and two more plants were added in 1983 and 1988. The company had export partners in 30 countries and recently manufactured over a million refrigerators and freezers per year.
After German reunification, the two companies became the property of the Treuhandanstalt in Berlin, which merged the companies in the successor company Foron. Through cooperation with Greenpeace and the Dortmund Hygiene Institute under the direction of Harry Rosin , dkk Scharfenstein succeeded in 1992 in developing the world's first CFC and HFC- free refrigerator and in 1993 launching it as Foron Unternehmensbeteiligungen GmbH, then as Foron Household Appliances GmbH. The so-called Dortmund mixture of gases such as butane and propane was used as the refrigerant . In contrast to CFCs, these are not ozone-damaging. They contribute far less to global warming than the HFCs propagated as a replacement at the time. At first, well-known competitors presented the cooling process as dangerous and inefficient in order to place their own devices on the market with the highly climate-damaging refrigerant R134a . Within four weeks, 65,000 pre-orders for the “Greenfreeze” were received. The trust, which had already planned the liquidation of dkk Scharfenstein, now refrained from doing so. 540 jobs were preserved. In the meantime, the new technology has been adopted by most manufacturers and is standard in environmentally friendly refrigerators. However, dkk Scharfenstein or Foron hardly benefited from their invention, as they waived patenting. This corresponded to the agreement with Greenpeace, who wanted to spread the technology as widely as possible.
Foron Hausgeräte GmbH has developed into a full-range supplier since 1993. After bankruptcy in 1996, the Dutch group of companies ATAG Foron took over . In March 2000, Erwin Bonn GmbH Duisburg (EBD) bought sales and customer service. Then Foron, like EBD and the Seppelfricke brand, acquired in December 2000, was merged into EFS Hausgeräte GmbH in 2001 , a subsidiary of the Italian Antonio Merloni SpA , Fabriano, a home appliance manufacturer also operating under the "ARDO" brand.
The brands remained independently positioned in retail. In 2006 EFS presented the Foron by Ardo product line extension with high-quality products in an exclusive Italian design. In December 2009, EFS Hausgeräte GmbH filed for bankruptcy.
Products
Foron products were offered in the categories washing and drying (front and top loading, exhaust air dryer) as well as cooling and freezing (fridges and freezers, fridge-freezers, appliance combinations). The focus was on unusual product ideas: Foron Unternehmensbeteiligungen GmbH, later Foron Household Appliances GmbH, not only brought the first CFC / HFC-free refrigerator (under its managing director Eberhard Günther ) onto the market. In 2006 the HomePub , the first fridge -freezer with an integrated beer dispenser , was launched, which received the Plus X Award in the “Innovation” category.
exhibition
In an adjoining building of the former VEB dkk Scharfenstein, the Verein Historische Kleinkälte Scharfenstein e. V. has been a museum since 2007. The museum shows products and contemporary documents from over 80 years of small cold in Scharfenstein.
Individual evidence
- ↑ DKW cooling. In: dkw-autounion.de. Ralf Kopmann, accessed on March 31, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Christoph Gunkel: Eco-Revolution from East Germany: How Foron invented the world's first CFC-free refrigerator. In: spiegel.de. March 13, 2013, accessed March 15, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c Martin Kloth: First refrigerator without CFC was a Foron , in maz-online.de from March 15, 2018
- ↑ Greenfreeze: The CFC-free refrigerator , in greenpeace.de of October 3, 2002.
- ↑ Marita Jüngst: EFS files for bankruptcy. In: Rheinische Post , December 23, 2009 ( online for a fee in genios.de ).
- ↑ Foron: Comeback with HomePub. In: ikz.de. STROBEL VERLAG GmbH & Co. KG, December 28, 2005, accessed on March 31, 2020 .
Web links
- Student thesis on the eco-fridge
- Homepage of the Historical Small Cold Museum
- Fact check of the ZDF magazine The establishment for the settlement of Foron by the trust