Gneuss Brand Guidelines: Rotary Melt Filters and MRS Extruders From Bad Oeynhausen Since 1983

An engineer’s idea in East Westphalia.

Gneuss began with one idea for a machine component. The company says the engineer Detlef Gneuss incorporated Gneuss Kunststofftechnik in Bad Oeynhausen in 1983, around the idea of a rotary filtration system for polymer melts, with the support of his wife, Christel Gneuss. Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing reported in June 2022 that Detlef and Christel Gneuss founded the company in 1983, and that in its early years it specialised in rotary filtration systems and screen changers. Petnology, reporting the 25th anniversary in 2008, described the start the same way: the idea of a new type of screen changer.

A melt filter cleans molten plastic during extrusion. Petnology reported in 2008 that more than 4,000 Gneuss systems were at work in raw material production, film, sheet, compounding and the recycling of contaminated polymers. On the Gneuss design, the company says, a rotary disk carrying a ring of screen cavities sits between two solid steel blocks. The company’s timeline puts the first two-stage system with its patented rotary technology at 1987. The first target markets, it says, were the extrusion of profiles, pipes and sheet, and the making of compounds. From the beginning, it says, it also meant to be a leading specialist in pressure and temperature sensors.

Growth came quickly, by the company’s account. About five years after the founding it was laying the foundations for new buildings in the Eidinghausen industrial park and setting up a US subsidiary, Gneuss Inc., in Philadelphia. In Japan, it says, its partner Itochu Plamac formed a separate company to handle the filtration business. In 1993, to mark ten years, it held the first two-day Gneuss Plastics Symposium, which the company says drew more than 300 visitors. Petnology reported about 150 international guests at the anniversary symposium of October 2008, held at the company’s own premises in tents, with lectures from research institutes and universities.

RSFgenius, MRS and OMNI.

The company’s product story has three chapters. The first is the filter. The KSF screen changer was added for special applications in 1992. Then, the company says, raw material makers asked for a system for technical plastics on a large scale, and it developed a totally encapsulated, fully automatic rotary filter for PET together with Hoechst. That work led to the RSFgenius range, which went into large-scale production in 1997. Plastech reported in June 2025 that Gneuss called the RSFgenius its flagship and planned to show an RSFgenius 330L at K 2025, alongside the SFXmagnus, SFneos and KSF screen changers.

The second chapter is the extruder. The MRS, short for Multi Rotation System, adds a multiple-screw section to a single-screw extruder. Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing reported in 2022 that it was introduced in 2007 as an extruder suitable for recycling PET bottle flake, and that it processes the PET without pre-drying by using a simple water ring vacuum system. The company’s own text and Petnology also point to the K show of 2007, while the timeline on the company’s website says 2006. Petnology credited the extruder to Detlef Gneuss as its inventor. By 2022, Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing reported, extruders made up about half of all sales, by the company’s account. The MRSpure and MDS extruders were later additions.

The third chapter is the complete line. The company describes a move from auxiliary equipment supplier to system supplier, and today it sells the OMNI, OMNImax and OMNIboost recycling systems, which it says handle polymers including PET, PP and PS in forms from bottles and trays to films and fibres. At a two-day technology event in November 2023, Plastech reported, the company ran PET and PS regrind into thermoforming sheet on an OMNImax line, and regranulated PET fibre on an OMNIboost system. PolyForm NEXT reported that the MRS 110 shown at K 2025 was the core of an OMNI line bound for Cotnyl, an Argentinian maker of thermoformed packaging.

Machinery makers and their halls.

Machinery for plastics film, sheet and recycling is sold to plant owners and engineers, and its makers build their image on the machines themselves. The tallest of them is the blown-film tower, where a shining bubble of film rises several storeys before it is flattened and wound. Wide cast lines and winders offer the same kind of picture lying down: long, level and glossy, with the finished roll as the closing shot.

Close-ups supply the colour. Extruder barrels, guards and control cabinets are often finished in brand colours, which makes the livery of the line one of the few visual assets a maker fully owns. Thermoforming makers favour the end of the line, with formed trays stacking up as they leave the machine. Makers of bottles and preforms show rows of finished shapes.

Recycling has added its own set of pictures. Pellets in glass jars, shown before and after processing, turn an industrial step into something that can sit on a table at a trade stand. Bales of used film do the opposite job, showing the raw material as it arrives. Both images need careful handling, because they suggest a result that the words around them should state plainly and with a source.

The category’s main stages are its trade fairs, among them K in Düsseldorf, NPE in the United States, Plastpol in Poland and Fakuma in Germany. Stands there often feature running machinery. For a designer, this is a field where the identity has to work on a steel guard, a touch screen and a technical data sheet as well as on a web page. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker and leaves the rest out.

A second generation in charge.

Gneuss is still a family company. Petnology wrote in 2008 that it was run by the founders together with their sons, Daniel Gneuss and Dr. Stephan Gneuss. The company says the change of generations was planned from early 2000, and that 30 years after the founding, once the founders withdrew, the sons took over sole management. Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing reported in 2022 that Daniel Gneuss handles North and South America from Matthews, North Carolina, as president of Gneuss Inc., and that Stephan Gneuss is responsible for operations in Bad Oeynhausen. Plastech called them “the CEO brothers” at the 40th anniversary in 2023, when Detlef Gneuss looked back on the company’s past at a gala dinner.

Bad Oeynhausen remains the centre. The company says it is committed to its production site there and to the expectations of products “made in Germany.” It lists a subsidiary in the USA, offices in Brazil and China and a cooperation partner in Japan, and it says it holds more than 100 international patents. The site has been extended more than once: the company gives 2,400 square metres of added space in 2014, and Plastech described a recently built 2,700-square-metre production hall in 2023.

The sensor business has now moved out of the parent. The company said in 2026 that the operational business would transfer to the new Gneuss MC GmbH & Co. KG from 1 May 2026, with all of the division’s employees, in response to the division’s growth. The new company develops and makes pressure and temperature sensors for extrusion and has its own website.

The company also reports trade recognition. It says its MRS jump extruder was shortlisted in the Recycling Machinery Innovation category of the Plastics Recycling Awards Europe 2022. It reported two Brazilian trade awards in November 2024: a Silver Award in the Machines and Systems category of the Plástico Sul Innovation and Sustainability Award for OMNI, and the Prêmio Plásticos em Revista in the Top Technology Supplier category for its melt filtration systems.

The trade names themselves are technical, and capital letters do much of the work: RSF, KSF, MRS, OMNI. The family name appears as Gneuss on the company’s website, and the German spelling Gneuß also turns up in print.

For a design guide, Gneuss shows how a company can build its name on a single component and then extend that name across whole lines. Compare Starlinger, another family-owned maker of plastics recycling machinery, and Reifenhäuser, another German maker of extrusion machinery. For this guide we use teal and a red with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Gneuss’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.