The company Häußler & Sauter was founded in 1949 by Inge Sauter and has been family-owned for 60 years – and today in its third generation.

The starting point of a successful company development was a small quantity of coffee and tea, which was very valuable at the time – shortly after the end of the war and even before the currency reform, and thus in times of scarce consumer goods. The company founder began portioning the goods for retail sale, although the coffee was soon to prove unsuitable under the given circumstances. The success of these first production and sales efforts in handling tea was quite different. Here, a multifaceted world with great development opportunities opened up – initially it was only black tea, but soon also herbal and fruit teas. Inge Sauter provided the initial financing by doing bookkeeping for craft businesses during night shifts.

As is so often the case, a company history began with pure manual labor. The tea was first weighed using apothecary scales, placed in bags manually formed from gauze, complete with a holding thread and label, and finally sealed with aluminum caps. Soon, the founder's son, Gerhard Klar – still a student at the time – built the first simple devices for sealing filter paper bags and dosing tea. This continued until his first specially designed machines took over the portioning and packaging of the by then already well-known tea specialties.

The design of all HST tea bag machines is still significantly further developed to this day by the senior boss, Dr. Gerhard Klar, in the company's mechanical engineering division. The machines are used in our own three production facilities and are also sold to tea packaging companies all over the world.

As early as the mid-1960s, the first medicinal teas were also machine-filled in Kressbronn, and under the expert cooperation of the pharmacist Prof. P. Bauer from Isny/Allgäu, medicinal tea recipes were created, some of which are still used today in their unaltered form. This also includes the now generally known and widespread blend for the Fennel-Anise-Caraway tea, the basis of which was taken from old herb books.