Pipeline Factory

In 1890 the Mannesmann brothers invented a mechanised process to produce seamless pipes – until then, pipes had been manufactured by hand. This created the necessary conditions to produce reliable pipelines for steam, gas and liquids in electricity and heating systems.

The engineer Franz Seiffert recognised the possibilities of this industrial pipeline construction that was still in its infancy.

He founded the rapidly expanding company ‘Franz Seiffert & Co.’ in 1893 in Berlin, which he then relocated to Eberswalde in 1898. The company quickly gained international fame: In 1899 it built the first pipeline system for the electricity works in Madrid, in 1900 all of the pipelines to supply steam at the Paris Exposition, and in 1901 more systems in South America, South Africa, Russia and other European states. The pipeline factory supplied 3,000 systems worldwide until 1908. The originally small site was continuously expanded in the decades that followed, and infrastructural expansion was carried out with a railway connection until 1923.

In 1938 the Mannesmann corporation took over the plant and made huge profit producing war materials in the Second World War. The pipeline factory was the first plant in Eberswalde to provisionally restart production in 1946 after the end of the war, in order to supply the population with everyday commodities like cooking pots and beetroot squeezers and to repair the neighbouring factories. VEB Rohrleitungsbau Finow came into being in 1953, and in the 1970s specialised in pipelines for chemical plants and power stations, including nuclear power stations. In the 1980s it became the sole supplier of pipeline elements for the second cycle in nuclear power stations. The plant was privatised with German reunification and changed hands multiple times before becoming FINOW Rohrsysteme GmbH and the Rofin Gewerbepark Eberswalde.