Next level stories

For more than 100 years, the Belgian technology supplier Vyncke has been building its expertise on energy production from a wide range of biomass by-products, including industrial and municipal waste. This year, Vyncke entered a strategic partnership with Bühler to scale up the impact of Vyncke’s solutions in the food and feed industry – playing a major part in creating more sustainable value chains and the business success of our customers.

myBühler is Bühler’s official customer portal. It was established in 2016 to offer Bühler’s customers a digital overview of all their assets and to provide them easy access to our digital services and our e-Commerce platform. myBühler is ISO-27001 certified and free for all Bühler customers. It’s available in over 130 countries worldwide and in eight languages. In 2021, every third spare part order was placed online via myBühler. The user friendliness is the guiding principle of the myBühler platform, and it is continuously enhanced with new features. Since last year, Bühler’s customers can identify their required spare parts directly by taking a photo – thanks to the automated image recognition software. Another popular feature is the bulk entry mode, which allows customers to process large purchase orders within seconds. 

Bühler’s Application & Training Centers are unique in many respects. They are spread all over the world to respond to local tastes and market needs. Customers benefit from technologists and experts who accompany them in developing and testing new recipes and products from the idea to the trial runs.

In anticipation of cancellations of trade fairs across the world due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Bühler decided to host the Bühler Virtual World in March 2021. As in 2020, customers from all Bühler businesses joined Bühler experts for insightful presentations and keynotes, grabbed the opportunity to experience Bühler’s solutions virtually, and engage in personal one to one meetings. Bühler’s goal was to stay close to its customers and understand their needs in times when traveling an in-person meetings were not possible – a goal the company achieved with over 9,000 visitors to the Virtual World and around 1,500 virtual one to one meetings. 

The coronavirus pandemic has forced many countries to impose strict travel restrictions. This put Bühler experts from the Nutrition Application Center in Switzerland in a challenging position, since customer requests for product trials continued to soar. Plant-based meat alternatives are booming, and extrusion technology is in great demand. What could be done? Those responsible decided without further ado to offer virtual trials.

Bühler opened the African Milling School (AMS) in Nairobi, Kenya, to train professionals from the region for the region and to reduce dependence on foreign specialists. It’s based on the Swiss vocational system, with a strong emphasis on hands-on training in its school mill and laboratory with a bakery. When the Covid-19 pandemic forced the school to close in March 2020, the team quickly established e-learnings which apprentices could access on their smartphones back in their home countries while boarders were closed. Due to the increased demand for virtual training, the AMS launched a pilot training with TechnoServe on food fortification. This training is open to quality control managers, millers, and other professionals in the nutrition sector, and drew huge interest in the entire region across Africa and the Middle East. Today, training courses take place on site again in accordance with local Covid-19 measures, and the vital in-person training is in high demand. Online training, however, is here to stay and will continue to accelerate AMS’ impact to build up expert knowledge in the region.