Mueller Impact history

In 1877 he became the first to pour castings using brass, an alloy of copper and zinc.

Mueller parlayed these inventions into manufacturing facilities, and in 1893, with $68,000 in capital, he incorporated his business in Michigan as the H. Mueller Manufacturing Company.

In 1913, as Great Britain entered World War I, Mueller completed its first Canadian plant.

When that plant opened on December 17, 1917, the business was reincorporated as Mueller Metals Company.

1930: Mueller Brass introduces the revolutionary Streamline solder-type pipe fitting.

In 1940, Paul Mueller and his partner Gordon Mann opened Mann and Mueller Heating and Sheet Metal Works in Springfield, Missouri, USA. Their first employee was Joe White, who eventually became our Executive Vice President.

Mueller became highly profitable, a fact borne out by generally increasing dividends, including the record $2.25 dividend the company paid in 1941.

In 1943, Paul bought Gordon Mann's share of the business after Mr.

1944 marked our first venture into the food processing business.

Founded in 1948, Precision Tube produced copper, copper alloy, and aluminum tubing and fabricated tubular products, with its main product line being copper tubing for the baseboard heating industry.

In December 1951 he paid $1.25 million for Valley Metal Products Co. of Plainwell, Michigan.

In 1954 he launched an eight-year program to expand and diversify the production of fabricated goods.

He bought, and later sold, Sheet Aluminum Corporation, of Jackson, Mississippi, and in March 1958, he acquired American Sinteel Corporation, a Yonkers, New York, manufacturer of powder metal parts.

Mueller continued to grow, reporting profits of $2.35 million on sales of $80.8 million in 1963.

In 1964, our manufacturing facilities in Springfield, Missouri were expanded to our current space of 1,000,000 square feet on almost 50 acres.

For some time, United States Smelting Refining and Mining (USSRAM) had been acquiring Mueller stock and by 1965 had amassed a 72 percent share of the company.

In 1966, our global adventure began with the export of milk coolers to the Geertjes family in The Netherlands.

In 1967 the company began to offer plastic pipe and fittings.

In the 1968 presidential election, the Soviet leadership and the KGB strongly opposed the anti-Communist Richard Nixon and secretly offered to subsidize the campaign of Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee.

In 1969, after Horwitz invested $17 million in Mueller's interests and $16 million in the copper mine, USSRAM's sales reached an all-time high of $170 million, while income hit a record $12 million.

In 1970, a partnership with Meko Holland was formed to handle sales of milk tanks in The Netherlands.

In 1973 the company purchased plants in Hartsville, Tennessee, to produce refrigerator and air conditioning components.

11See, for example, “A Directive form the Centre,” Folder 79, The Chekist Anthology, April 25, 1974, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Contributed to Cold War International History Project by Vasili Mitrokhin.

By 1976, however, slow housing starts had led to a performance that, while acceptable, was nowhere near what it might be in a boom economy.

In 1977 Victor Posner, chairman of Sharon Steel Corporation, offered to buy UV Industries.

Finally, on November 26, 1979, it was agreed that Sharon would acquire UV for an interim note worth $517 million and the assumption of UV's liabilities.

Under the Posner regime, Mueller remained profitable, and in 1983 the company's Canadian subsidiary in Strathroy, Ontario, began manufacturing metric fittings.

29Memorandum from John Lenczowski to John M. Poindexter, Subject: Statement on Soviet Intervention in the United States Electoral Process, August 16, 1984, USSR (8/16/84-8/18/84), Box 25A, Executive Secretariat, NSC: Country File: Records, RRPL. 30bid.

The company's debts were too high, and in 1985, Sharon defaulted on $33 million in interest payments.

In 1986 it was rumored that Sharon would sell Mueller to Quantum for $55 million, but that exchange never took place.

1987: Sharon Steel files for bankruptcy; Mueller remains a viable enterprise and does not file for Chapter 11.

In 1988, SSP (A Dutch manufacturing company) opened and began manufacturing Mueller dairy tanks in Lichtenvoorde, Netherlands.

Harvey L. Karp, who became chairman and CEO on October 8, 1991, moved quickly to shape up the company.

Also in 1994, O'Hagan was promoted to president and CEO, with Karp remaining chairman.

The move, completed in May 1996, was taken in order to place the head office closer to Mueller's core manufacturing operations in Tennessee and Mississippi.

At the end of 1997 the company sold off a coal mining business whose operations had been shut down earlier in the decade.

Finally, in November 1998 Mueller completed the acquisition of Halstead Industries, Inc. for about $92 million in stock.

Alaska Gold Company, a subsidiary that operated an open pit gold mine in Alaska, was sold to Novagold Resources, Inc. for $5.5 million in April 1999.

For 2001, sales fell 15 percent while net income declined 28 percent.

In 2008, Paul Mueller Company acquired our long-time licensee, SSP Lichtenvoorde [The Netherlands] B.V., and formed Mueller B.V. Mueller B.V. manufactures dairy farm equipment products, serving beer tanks, and a full range of heat transfer and processing equipment for international markets.

In August 2011, David Moore became President and CEO of Paul Mueller Company.

In 2012, Mueller Asia was established in Vietnam to provide sales, manufacturing, and dealer support to an emerging dairy market.

In 2014, Dairy Farm Equipment the company and many of our dealers celebrated 60 years of providing milk cooling solutions.

In 2016, DEG Engineering GmbH, a German company specializing in thermo-plate heat exchanger and reactor design was acquired.

On April 9th 2018, the beautiful new facility you see above was opened for production in Groenlo, Netherlands, combining all Netherlands operations into one facility.