Melitta

Melitta Group

Type	Private
Industry	Retail Coffee
Founded	1908
Headquarters	Minden, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Products	Coffees,Coffee filters,small appliance (coffee makers etc.)
Revenue	1.325 billion € (2014)
Number of employees	3,737 (2014)
Website	www.melitta-group.com

Melitta (/məˈliːtə/) is a Germany-based company selling coffee, paper coffee filters, and coffee makers, part of the Melitta Group, which also has Melitta branches in other countries world-wide. The company is headquartered in Minden, North Rhine-Westphalia.

It is named after Melitta Bentz (1873–1950) who founded the company after she invented the drip brew paper coffee filter (German patent granted July 8, 1908). Bentz later ran the company as a family business.

In 1908, Melitta Bentz, a 35-year-old housewife from Dresden, Germany, invented the first coffee filter, receiving a patent registration for her "Filter Top Device lined with Filter Paper" from the Patent Office in Berlin on July 8. She founded the company bearing her name the same year.

In the 1930s, Melitta revised the original filter, tapering it into the shape of a cone and adding ribs. This created a larger filtration area, allowing for improved extraction of the ground coffee. In 1936, the widely recognised cone-shaped filter paper that fit inside the tapered filter top was introduced. The '102' became the most popular.

Melitta continued to develop new techniques to improve the shape, performance, material and production process of its filter systems. In 1989, Natural Brown coffee filters made from unbleached pulp were introduced, an industry first which kept unwanted by-products from leaching into the environment. In 1992, responding to the continued popularity of white filter paper, Melitta developed an oxygen-bleaching process to produce white paper without chlorine. In 1997, Melitta developed another filter with Flavor Pores, microfine perforations that filter out unwanted sediment, particles and oils. Melitta improved these filters in 2002 by adding a second Safety Crimp for extra strength and durability. Bamboo Filters were introduced in 2007, and an improved Flavor Pores filter later that year.