Our Origin

The steel plate valve invented by Hanns Hörbiger is patented. The valve plate opens when the gas pressure is high enough and closes as long as the spring pressure is higher than the gas pressure.

The HOERBIGER steel plate valve brings about a tremendous improvement in performance

in the compressors used for steelmaking at that time. It makes steel production much more reliable and efficient than would have been thought possible at the time, and also paves the way for the invention of modern high-pressure chemistry.

Hanns Hörbiger founds a design office in Budapest together with the engineer Friedrich Wilhelm Rogler. This office is moved to Vienna in 1903.

The HOERBIGER & Co. trading company with headquarters in Vienna is formed from the design office.

Alfred Hörbiger, the second eldest son of the company founder, starts in-house valve production in Vienna-Simmering.

Between 1925 and 1945, HOERBIGER & Co. is granted 171 patents for inventions and further developments in the field of compressor valves and controls.

After the destruction of the Viennese production plant in the last year of World War II and the unexpected death of Alfred Hörbiger, his wife Martina Hörbiger, who worked for the company, succeeds in rebuilding the plant.

Martina Hörbiger resumes international relations:
first in Europe, later also in America, Africa and Asia
.

Beginning diversification by starting production of compressed air components.

Since the end of the 1950s, HOERBIGER has been building up its own sales organization in North America, which is followed in 1963 by the founding of HOERBIGER Corporation of America and the establishment of its own production facilities. in 1970, HOERBIGER Nippon K.K. is founded in Japan, and initial contacts are established with Taiwan, Korea and China.

Entry into the service business for compressors. As a result, HOERBIGER grows into the global emerging markets at a very early stage.

Martina Hörbiger, the owner of the group of companies, dies at the age of 87.

She leaves the new management of the HOERBIGER Group of Companies, still appointed by her and the Board of Trustees of the HOERBIGER Foundation, the challenge of continuing the company's activities in her spirit, but also of reorganizing the corporate structure, which had been predominantly focused on her personality in the years before.

Reorganization into three divisions:
Compression Technology, Drive Technology, Automation Technology
.