As a Swiss family enterprise with a history of over 160 years, we are driven by a strong sense of purpose, and our strategy is based on deeply held values. Our purpose is to create innovations for a better world. And our values of trust, ownership, and passion are the guiding principles of our behavior.

Based on this, we have set goals for the coming years to improve profitable growth and be a technology leader in our industries, while balancing the needs of humanity, nature, and economy. We see profitable growth as a prerequisite to creating impact for a better world. It enables us to invest in the development of our company, products, and people. In choosing Bühler, our customers benefit in terms of their own business performance, their environmental impact, and from opportunities to offer their employees training at our schools and application centers. They also benefit from our global setup. 

Attaining our goals is only possible with a skilled and educated workforce. Therefore, we invest in our people and in so doing, contribute to improving their skills and their lives. We care for each other, and safety is a top priority. We never compromise on health and safety for our own employees, or the employees of our customers and our partners. We comply with all applicable rules and regulations, and human rights, wherever we do business, and our business activities are closely linked to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

To create and accelerate impact requires intense collaboration among all market players – industry, start-ups, and academia. Therefore, we have built a strong innovation ecosystem, which we are continuously expanding. In this way, we bring together purpose, people, and performance to accelerate impact for a better world.

At the very core of Bühler’s business model is the transformation of raw materials to intermediate and finished consumer products: from grains to flour, malt, baked goods, and bread; from beans to coffee, chocolate mass, pralines, and bars; from proteins to meat substitutes; from aluminum to structural car parts; from substrates to coated glass; from pigments to printing inks. The offering to our customers consists of complete value chain solutions with lines, plants and food parks, services, and single machines. Core technologies within our solutions include grinding, dispersing, extrusion, cleaning, optical sorting, drying, roasting, mixing, dosing, thin-film vacuum coating, casting, and more.

With these technologies, we can contribute to providing adequate food and nutrition within more sustainable food value chains. Major opportunities lie in enabling a sustainable protein supply by reducing the CO₂e footprint and use of antibiotics in livestock, for instance with feed based on upcycling of side streams through insect rearing and processing. Developing great-tasting meat and dairy alternatives is another key topic which will be addressed through solutions leveraging plant-based proteins valorization opportunities. The biggest opportunities for the mobility industries lie in ultra-large structural aluminum parts, improved battery components as well as optical systems to allow for autonomous and safe transportation. 

An important core competence of Bühler is the highly specified process know-how for many solutions. This is the essence of Bühler: understanding, shaping, and controlling material transformation processes. This enables us to support our customers on all levels, starting from the evaluation of future finished products and recipe development to trials, scaling to industrial level, and implementation of the solution.

By continuing to spend up to 5% of our turnover on research and development (R&D) annually, we can develop technologies, machines, and services, which differentiate in the market with high performance, reliability, efficiency, and improved sustainability Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for energy, waste, and water.

We balance the needs of humanity, nature, and economy in every decision in order to unlock sustainable business opportunities. Services enable us to improve the performance and productivity of the existing installed base of our customers and in doing so, minimize energy, waste, and water. Services are key enablers to making our customers installed assets more efficient and sustainable.

Bühler has developed a comprehensive services portfolio from process optimization and maintenance to hardware and spare parts, as well as knowledge transfer and upgrading packages. A key element of our services are digital platforms (myBühler and Bühler Insights) and the applications running on them, for example, to calculate, monitor, and report on impact along complete value chains such as CO₂e (CO₂ equivalent) calculation from planted coffee beans to a cup of coffee.

Our monitoring services ensure the optimal operation of process technologies to save energy and water and reduce waste at any point in time. Retrofit services to renovate our customers’ installed base allow us to make sustainability step changes – new equipment and plants could never fully compensate for the existing production capacities. The current share of Customer Service is 25% of turnover. It is our goal to further increase this proportion.