At joint trade fair stands, Franke benefited from the far more extensive facilities of its "big brother" from Dortmund.
Few things fuelled the economic upturn of Franke & Heydrich GmbH from the mid-1950s as much as the cooperation with a much larger competitor from the Ruhr region. An opportunity that Erich Franke recognised and courageously seized.
While Franke & Heydrich GmbH mainly received smaller orders for customised products in the early years, this changed spectacularly in 1954. This is when the company “Quarzlampen-Fabriken Hanau” placed the first significant series production order for ceiling turntables for operating table lamps. And this took place against strong competition, including the large company “Eisenwerk Rothe Erde GmbH” in Dortmund, a specialist in slewing rings. A fine example of the technical advantages of the wire race bearing developed by Erich Franke.
This was also recognised in Dortmund – along with the danger that the small company on the Ostalb could become a serious competitor. This is why the commercial director of Rothe Erde, Edmund Schmude, contacted Erich Franke and made a tempting suggestion: What if Rothe Erde were to benefit from Franke’s patents through licences and Franke, in turn, were to benefit from the huge production and sales potential of the major Dortmund company? Thus in January 1956, a general licence agreement was signed, which became a turbo accelerator for Franke over the next few decades.
In accordance with this, Rothe Erde would from then onwards manufacture all wire race bearing slewing rings with a diameter of more than 400 mm, but would pay licence fees to Franke and purchase the ball races exclusively from them. The Dortmund-based company also applied for property rights abroad for all Franke patents and handled exports.
Eisenwerk Rothe Erde not only paid licence fees, but also carried out professional marketing for the "Franke wire race bearing system".
Because it was now necessary and also possible thanks to a larger advance licence payment, Franke built a modern production facility on a greenfield site in Aalen in the same year. Sales grew considerably thanks to the general licence agreement and new international customers, but also led to increasing dependency: In 1973, Franke generated 68 per cent of its sales from Rothe Erde business. In the same year, after long, tough negotiations, a new cooperation agreement was therefore signed with the partner now operating under the name of “Hoesch Rothe Erde-Schmiedag AG” (HRS), which gave Franke more freedom and heralded the strategic diversification of the product and customer portfolio. //
Rothe Erde not only promoted the wire race bearings in Germany and Europe, but also explained their advantages through presentations and seminars in the USA, Brazil and Japan.