The company was founded in 1965 and was first known as “ODONE POLIN”. Its main activity then was the production of filter cells for air conditioning systems. In 1982 the company first introduced its trade mark ‘GENERAL FILTER’ into the Italian market. 1984 was a very important year for GENERAL FILTER because it became the first company in Southern Europe to introduce the production of stitched fibreglass and welded synthetic bag filters. By 1986 production of the filters had grown to such an extent that it was decided to change the company status to GENERAL FILTER ITALIA S.p.A..

The continued need to expand the range of products available to the market over the next few years, meant that their single plant was no longer sufficient to cope with demand, so to make the company more commercially viable and add greater production capacity, it was decided that a new plant should be developed to serve their next major market place, so in 1992 was born the Spanish partner GENERALFILTER IBERICA S.A., which was able to serve the needs of the entire Iberian peninsula market. Since 1995 GENERAL FILTER has continued to make extensive new investments, in order to develop and increase production to keep pace with the growing demand for its products across Europe.