In 2004, Rexnord set out to make one if its most significant acquisitions, Falk Corporation.

With complementary products and technologies, Falk—also headquartered in Milwaukee—is a manufacturer of mechanical transmission components.

Like Rexnord, Falk also has a rich history dating back to 1848, when Bavarian-born Franz Falk was 24 years old and decided to test his beer-making skills in the New World. With a partner, in 1856, Falk purchased a parcel of land in the outskirts of Milwaukee and built a brewery. Later, Falk’s sons Otto and Hermann left the beer business and sold it to Captain Fred Pabst.

Hermann, who became the industrialist, started a business based on a process called cast-welding—essentially a foundry on wheels for repairing streetcar rails. In 1899, the firm was given a new name: the Falk Company. Fairly early on in its life, the company’s product lines grew to include oil switches, motor gears, and pinions.

Falk himself was an industrialist in search of an industry, trying everything from foundry work to kerosene engines. By 1910, the streetcar tracks leading to the formation of the company were left behind. The early 1900s demonstrated that the world was becoming gear driven. It was on that premise that Falk moved forward and has stayed on that course ever since.

As were most industrial leaders of the day, the company was heavily involved in the war effort. Falk drives turned the propellers on 12 aircraft carriers, 27 heavy cruisers, 184 destroyers, hundreds of cargo ships and tugboats, and 1,024 Navy LSTs (Landing Tank Ships).

International operations kicked into high gear in the 1950s and ‘60s, with the company opening a manufacturing plant in Brazil, and operations starting in both Mexico (Mecanica-Falk) and Canada. In ’68, the Rockford Illinois-based Sunstrand Corp. bought Falk. The company announced a new fluid power drive, in 1972, that incorporated Sunstrand hydraulic motors. In the following year, Joe Zwisler became the first non-Falk president of the company.

The 1980s recession wasn’t kind to Falk—or to most industrial suppliers. Things turned around by ’88, creating a segued nicely into the 1990s, during which Falk manufacturing operations improved with such equipment as laser cutting machines, machining centers, a 40-ft Maag gear shaper, and a 50-ft boring mill.

Rexnord’s acquisition of what had become Falk Corp. was finalized in 2005. Falk’s annual revenues at the time totaled $200 million. The combined entity brought Rexnord annual revenues immediately to the $1 billion mark.

Pretty impressive for a company started by a Bavarian beer and brewing buff, Franz Falk. Pretty impressive, indeed.