When colleagues Carsten Petry and Mary Olwal attended the internal “Master of Bühler Management” (MBM) training course in 2015 and developed a business idea, they identified the Legria concept as an opportunity to use and upgrade existing resources in a sustainable way and turn them into healthy food. The Urs Bühler Innovation Fund (UBIF) immediately recognized the potential of the business idea: “With the upcycling of brewers’ spent grain, we have the opportunity to create healthy and sustainable products that provide added value for brewers and consumers,” says Peter Stähli, CEO at the Swiss Entrepreneurs Foundation, member of the UBIF Advisory Board and Member of the Board of Directors at CFS.
UBIF supported the start-up founded by Petry and Olwal from the initial idea through acceleration to the financing of the market launch. “Legria is an example of how we support intrapreneurs systematically at Bühler,” says Johannes Wick, CEO of Business Grains & Food at Bühler and Member of the Board of Directors at CFS. With this support from Bühler and other partner companies, the young entrepreneurs have developed an innovative processing and application solution that transforms brewers’ spent grain into an ingredient that contains 54 percent fiber and 20 percent protein. The upgrading of the brewers’ spent grain is just the first step.
The long-term goal is to profitably add value to a wide variety of by-products in the food industry. Friedrich Witschi joined Legria in 2021 as a Business & Application Development Officer to contribute his many years of experience in this area. The team founded Circular Food Solutions AG (CFS) in 2021 to prepare for market launch and allow prospective investors to invest in this forward-looking company.