Seventy years, four generations, one idea
The name comes from Guttenbrunn in present-day Romania. The company returned there in 2012 — a circle that rarely closes quite so literally.
Timeline
The milestones
Based on the company chronicle of the Müller-Guttenbrunn Group.
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1879
The name comes to Austria
Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn leaves Guttenbrunn in the Banat to work as a writer and as director of the Vienna Volksoper. Austria becomes the family’s new home.
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1954
Founded in Waidhofen an der Ybbs
Herbert Müller-Guttenbrunn founds an iron trading business. At first the company lives from trade, not from processing.
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from 1960
The move to Amstetten
The company relocates to Industriestraße in Amstetten — still the head office today and the place where the first processing stage happens.
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2nd generation
Herbert and Dietrich take over
The sons lead the business through its strongest years of expansion. A trading house becomes a processor.
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from 1990
Into Central and South-Eastern Europe
With the opening of the East, companies are set up in Czechia, Hungary and Romania. The group begins to think along the Danube.
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Kematen/Ybbs
Non-ferrous processing is built
A dedicated site is developed for non-ferrous metals. This is where separation beyond the shredder begins — the core of today’s depth of recycling.
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2004
Plastics recycling starts
Set up as a joint venture under the name MBA Polymers Austria, the plant recovers single-grade plastics from electrical waste.
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2006
Third generation
Herbert Müller-Guttenbrunn steps back and Christian Müller-Guttenbrunn takes over leadership of the group.
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2012
Back to the roots
A new recycling plant starts up in Frumușeni near Arad, a few kilometres from Guttenbrunn.
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2017
MGG Polymers fully acquired
The group buys out its partners and has run the plastics plant in Kematen on its own ever since.
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2025
Entsorgungen Unger in Loosdorf
The acquisition adds another site in Lower Austria.
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today
Fourth generation
Maximilian Müller-Guttenbrunn represents the fourth generation in the business. The founding idea is unchanged: do not dispose, separate.
Drag or swipe
Origins
Why the name is a double one
Guttenbrunn — Zăbrani in Romanian — lies in the Banat, some 30 kilometres east of Arad.
Adam Müller, born in Guttenbrunn in 1852, added the name of his birthplace to his own when he moved to Vienna as a writer. The family stayed in Austria; the name kept the origin.
When the group opened a plant in Frumușeni in 2012, it was a few kilometres from that origin. That was not a marketing idea but a location decision — the region had the demand and the connections. That it happened to lead back to where the name came from is the part of the story nobody could have invented.
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