Company / History

The company dates back to the year 1716, when Johann Georg Katz established a sawmill in Gernsbach, Germany, a facility that would later be used to produce telegraph poles and railway sleepers. When Casimir Otto Katz hit upon the invention of the “moulded pulp drip mat” as the perfect way of commercially exploiting the wood waste produced by the sawmill, the first modern-style beer mats were born – and by 1903 the new product line was firmly established.