Paul Mueller Company

Paul Mueller Company manufactures stainless steel processing equipment and is one of the world's largest manufacturers of milk coolers for dairy farms. The company was incorporated in Missouri in 1946, succeeding a business established in 1940 that initially performed general sheet metal work for the building industry. In the mid-1940s, operations expanded to include poultry processing equipment and stainless steel cheese-making vats for dairy plants. In 1955, the company began manufacturing stainless steel milk coolers for dairy farms, and by 1960, it started producing stainless steel storage tanks, discontinuing its sheet metal operations. Paul Mueller Company acquired a water-purification product line in January 1987. Today, the company is a leading manufacturer of custom-made stainless steel processing equipment in the United States for the food, dairy, beverage, chemical, pharmaceutical, and other industries. Its products are used in various industrial applications, including food and beverage processing, pharmaceutical and biotechnological processing, chemical processing, water distillation, heat-transfer, HVAC, heat recovery, process cooling, and thermal-energy storage. In December 1997, the company opened a microbrewery and brewpub to demonstrate its brewery technology and expand marketing of brewery systems. In 1999, Paul Mueller Company established a joint venture by acquiring 50% of the common stock of Mueller Montana de Mexico, S.A. de C.V., a Mexican fabricator of processing equipment. In 2001, the company entered into a license, requirements, and manufacturing agreement to manufacture and sell specific heat-transfer products. This agreement has an initial term of four years and automatically renews unless either party provides 180-day nonrenewal notification. Under this agreement, the licensor exclusively purchases all its requirements for certain heat-transfer products from Paul Mueller Company.