Bühler Inspiration Hub

Head of R&D Digital Technologies David Kinsella and Product Manager Melvyn Penna reveal the behind-the-scenes discussions that led to the creation of Bühler’s latest engine for the newest versions of our color sorters – Merlin Ai. Learn how it responds to current issues such as the impacts of climate change, skilled labor shortages, and digitalization, and why it will be such an asset for food and non-food processors.

Over three decades, the DIL Deutsches Institut für Lebensmitteltechnik (German Institute of Food Technologies) has established itself as an important element of the international food industry. From research on cutting-edge topics such as future proteins to the development and production of proprietary process solutions, the DIL unites academia and industry in the common pursuit of more efficient and sustainable value chains. In early 2021, it formed a strategic partnership with Bühler. Our customers benefit from this close collaboration.

When Renzo Giovanni Martini arrived in Brazil from Italy in the 1950s, he founded Marvi with a dream to introduce the Italian ice cream tradition to the Brazilian lifestyle. Having conquered the ice cream cone market in Latin America almost 70 years later, Marvi has now set its sights on a tasty and sustainable innovation: edible coffee cups.

When it comes to the challenge of maintaining a leading position in the Latin American pasta and cookie market, M. Dias Branco Group focuses on integrated solutions and automation for quality and efficiency. The Group’s appetite to drive the food industry of the future remains insatiable – as does its goal to sustain its reputation as a benchmark producer on the continent.

Years in the planning, the first Mill E3 is now a reality providing vast quantities of digital data on the milling process that is set to transform milling practices globally. 

The Bühler spin-off Circular Food Solutions AG (CFS) uses brewers’ spent grain to make bread, biscuits, and chocolate spreads healthier. The start-up has now succeeded in producing meat substitutes that are tasty, sustainable, and a great alternative to plant-based protein isolates.

Gerelli is one of the most up-to-date roasters of peanuts in Europe. Using Bühler’s new Solano roaster – Gerelli not only increased the productivity of its peanut processing, it scored points with its customers by offering individual roasting profiles. And thanks to Solano, the company now has the option of processing other nut types as well as oilseed in the off-season.

Four university graduates from Zurich have quickly conquered the Swiss plant-based food market with their start-up, Planted Foods AG. Their flagship product, planted.chicken, convinces due to its amazingly genuine texture and because it contains absolutely no artificial additives. With Bühler as their technology partner, the four founders have ventured into industrial production.

Building a new business in a developing market takes time and a fair amount of resilience. The journey can be bumpy and comes with a learning curve. But with resilience and good management, results will follow. Nearly nine years since the formation of Bühler’s Insect Technology initiative, the business is now celebrating two major milestones: a new contract to realize its second industrial scale insect plant and the opening of the Insect Technology Center in Uzwil, Switzerland, planned for February 2022. In this interview, Andreas Baumann, Head of Market Segment Insect Technology at Bühler, shares the challenges and victories of this journey.

Plant-based proteins show no sign of slowing down in their quest to conquer food markets across the globe. Southeast Asia is no exception, and Singapore is leading the way as a fast-paced, international hub for innovation and collaboration in the food industry. With their recently opened Protein Innovation Centre, Givaudan and Bühler are perfectly suited and situated to test and scale plant-based food innovations in close collaboration with start-ups, established food producers, and university researchers.

Flour-based foods are a staple diet for hundreds of millions of Chinese people. The world’s biggest flour enterprise, the Wudeli Flour Group, has joined forces with Bühler to continuously optimize flour-milling, improve automation levels, and build digital factories for the benefit of customers, farmers, employees, the state, and business.

It is becoming a reality; the possibility of producing entire front or rear underbodies on die-casting machines is within reach. For automotive production, this will be the next big thing. A rear underbody made from a single die simplifies production dramatically – 70 parts become one. Assembly lines with 300 robots are eliminated, saving production space. And Bühler, thanks to its experience with large structural components, will play a driving role here.

Rotoflex AG is an important partner of Bühler when it comes to developing new products for grinding and dispersing ink colors. For over 10 years, the Swiss-based company has thoroughly vetted our new technologies, actively contributing to ensuring that MacroMedia, MicroMedia+ and Invicta are fit for the market. Rotoflex is now testing prospective service offers for Bühler. Both sides benefit from the partnership.

Everyone’s talking about a new technology in the semiconductor industry – EUV lithography. It uses extremely short-wave ultraviolet light to produce microchips in the tiniest format that can process enormous quantities of data in computers and smartphones. Bühler is playing a role in this development.

The unbeatable duo cuts emissions by driving down the energy costs of producing printing ink, a product used in nearly every aspect of our lives. Together, the MacroMedia and the MicroMedia Invicta boost productivity by 175 percent per line and slash energy costs by 50 percent for every ton of ink produced. 

Car manufacturers are at a watershed as they move further into the age of electric vehicles. With this change comes a shift in production methods, and Bühler is fully prepared for the new challenges.Car manufacturers are at a watershed as they move further into the age of electric vehicles. With this change comes a shift in production methods, and Bühler is fully prepared for the new challenges.

The intelligent glass manufactured by Saint-Gobain SageGlass combines well-being, climate protection, and extreme efficiency. Bühler is not only the technology partner for the manufacture of these smart windows, but also a customer – the façade of its new CUBIC innovation campus in Uzwil, Switzerland, is fitted with a dynamic outer shell. 

Although most energy in inks and coatings manufacture is consumed in the fine grinding process, pre-dispersing is the area where the most significant efficiency and sustainability gains can be made. Replacing High Speed Dissolver technology with bead-milling in the pre-dispersing stage can reduce the bead size required in fine-grinding, reducing overall energy demand by as much 50 percent, while cutting process times and costs.

Life as we know it is inextricably linked with batteries. From smartphones and electric cars to grid stabilization for renewable energy power plants – batteries are at the heart of how we communicate, entertain ourselves, and drive a more sustainable future.

Accelerating innovation is key to Bühler’s strategy, but just how do we stay ahead of global trends and invest in the right idea? The answer, says Bühler Chief Technology Officer Ian Roberts, involves a good dose of resilience, clarity on where to capture value for our customers based on extensive research, and staying true our vision to create innovations for a better world.

Premier Tech and Bühler are on the fast track. Since announcing their strategic partnership in bulk packaging in 2019, they followed up less than a year later with the creation of their joint venture based in China. This venture represents added value for customers who rely on cost-effective automated packaging technologies. Since March this year, many have benefited from the first jointly marketed, fully automated solution.

When Bühler announced the ambitious targets of reducing waste, water, and energy consumption by 50 percent in its customers’ value chains by 2030 two years ago, one of the first orders of business was to establish a system to measure how much CO₂ is emitted relative to any specific manufacturing activity. This is known as the emission factor, or CO₂e. Today, Bühler’s CO₂e Quantification Program is rapidly gaining traction.

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.

Our planet is facing unprecedented challenges, but it’s in our hands to support the change needed to realize a world in which more than 9 billion people can live well and within planetary boundaries by 2050. This is Bühler’s view and that of Peter Bakker, President and CEO of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and a globally renowned leader and influencer for sustainability. In this interview, he explains why now is the time to transform.

For Bühler, innovation and longevity are synonymous. Since its origin in 1860, the world has undergone serial technological and market transformations. With its strong research and development mindset, Bühler has considered how new scientific advances could provide potential benefits to customers at each evolutionary moment.

As vaccination programs gather pace around the world, businesses are turning their attention to planning for the post-pandemic economy. What shape will the recovery take and how will it emerge in different sectors? We don’t have a crystal ball, but a look at how past pandemics have ended can give us some clues. One thing is for sure, energy and optimism are on the rise – it’s time to get ready for growth.