Great Moments in Mueller History

In 1940, Paul Mueller and his partner Gordon Mann opened the Mann and Mueller Heating and Sheet Metal Works. Their first employee was Joe White, who eventually became our Executive Vice President. Joe retired in 1972, but he still stops by from time to time to visit and check in on us.

In 1943, Paul bought Gordon Mann's share of the business after Mr. Mann became ill, and the name of the business was changed to Paul Mueller Company.

1944 marked our first venture into the food processing business. We made chicken pluckers, scalders, and eviscerating equipment for a super salesman named Kent Tomlinson.

We were incorporated in Missouri in 1946, and that same year, we began manufacturing dairy processing equipment for the first time: cheese vats, culture tanks, and cheese presses.

With the new product line came new business, and in 1950 we moved from Commercial Street to Phelps Street. The original building was 27,000 square feet on a three-acre lot. In Springfield, we now have approximately 1,000,000 square feet under roof on about 50 acres.

New space made room for new products, and we built our first dairy farm milk coolers in 1955. The EmBee milk coolers were built for the Meyer-Blanke Company. Paul Mueller Company's farm milk cooler has played an important role in the success and growth of our Company. Thanks to the hard work and talents of our employees, we are recognized world-wide as the producer of the industry's highest quality farm milk cooling and storage systems.

Never content with the status quo, we continue to develop our dairy farm equipment with the farmer's bottom line in mind. With more than 72,000 milk coolers in roughly 125 countries, we can safely take at least a little credit for healthy teeth and bones all over the world.

In 1960, the decision was made to discontinue our heating and sheet metal contracting activities and to concentrate on manufacturing food processing equipment.

We became ASME^® certified to build pressure vessels in 1961, an important step in our development as a major producer of stainless steel processing equipment.

In 1964, our manufacturing facilities were expanded to our current space of 1,000,000 square feet - more than double the previous size. The same year manufacturing began on beer aging and fermenting equipment in the United States.

We began building wine tanks in 1965. Since then, our beautifully crafted tanks have been installed in wineries in Mexico, Japan, and the U.S. Our wine fermenting and storage tanks can be built specifically for either red or white wine processing.

The Mueller Fre-Heater^® was introduced in 1976. The Fre-Heater is an energy-saving unit that uses heat produced during the milk cooling process for dairy farm operations. They are now built at our Iowa facility.

In 1980, Mueller International Sales Corporation, which markets to 125 countries worldwide, received the U.S. Department of Commerce "E-Star" award for excellence in export.

In 1981, manufacture of our unique, patented Temp-Plate^® heat transfer surface was moved to the Warren Street facility. Developed over a period of years, it improved nearly all of our products.

In 1984, Mueller acquired the license to manufacture and sell the Accu-Therm^® plate heat exchanger.

In 1985, we entered the thermal energy storage market with the Avalanche^® ice harvester/chiller, and have since built systems with up to 1,650 tons of refrigeration capacity.

In 1987, we acquired the manufacturing facilities in Osceola, Iowa, which provided an additional 212,800 square feet of manufacturing floor space on a 50-acre plot. That same year, we purchased the water purification product line from Barnstead Industrial Products of Boston. This was the beginning of our PyroPure^® line.

The very popular 401(k) retirement plan was introduced to our employees in 1989.

In 1992, we acquired the rights to manufacture and sell vapor compression stills, our present VaPure^® product line.

We became ISO 9001 certified in 1994 and also acquired the rights to manufacture and sell MaximICE^® ice slurry systems.

In 1998, Mueller Field Operations, Inc. was established to enable us to compete for larger contracts that require on-site fabrication of tanks and/or vessels.

To effectively market our products in China, we applied for and were granted the China Safety Quality License in 1999.

2000, the first year of the new millennium, was our 60th anniversary. Over the past 60+ years, we have grown to be a leading manufacturer of outstanding equipment and unique solutions for the food, dairy, beverage, poultry and egg, meat, brewery, winery, biomedical, pharmaceutical, chemical, cosmetic, heat transfer, thermal storage, pure water, and dairy farm industries.