More than ever, the world demands effective solutions to reduce CO₂e emissions and address the loss of biodiversity and the distribution of wealth. Every credible scientific study published recently, such as the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has concluded that the condition of our planet and societies is even more challenging than we previously believed. The IPCC report also underscored that human actions still have the potential to determine the future course of the climate, primarily by reducing emissions substantially going forward.

For many years, we have focused our research and development efforts on improving both the commercial and sustainability performance of our solutions, products, and services. As a relevant player in our industries and as a responsible family-owned company, we reinvest most of our profits in innovations for this purpose, and in scaling them as fast as possible. In this sense, sustainability is embedded in all parts of our company.

These are our sustainability goals:
 

• We committed to having solutions ready to multiply by 2025 that reduce energy, waste, and water by 50% in the value chains of our customers. 
• We support our customers to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions following science-based targets.
• We committed to developing a pathway to achieve a 60% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in our own operations by 2030.¹
• We collaborate with suppliers to achieve a 27.5% reduction in our supply chain and logistics emissions by 2030.²
• We contribute to protecting and restoring biodiversity.  

¹ Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scopes 1 & 2, 2019 baseline. 
² Baseline 2019. 

At the 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 or dairy 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 complete industrial parks, services, and components. Core technologies within our solutions include drying, cleaning, grading, optical sorting, grinding, dispersing, extrusion, roasting, mixing, dosing, thin-film vacuum coating, casting, and many more.

With our technologies, we aim to contribute to effective improvements in the value chains of our industries. Major opportunities, among many others, lie in enabling a sustainable protein supply by reducing the CO₂e footprint in livestock and the related feed solutions, for instance with feed based on upcycling of side streams. Interesting 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 is our highly specified process know-how. 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 new finished products and recipe developments to trials, and on to scaling to industrial levels, and full operational production support in industrial production plants.

By continuing to spend up to 5% of our turnover on research and development annually, we develop innovative technologies, machines, and services, which differentiate in the market through high performance, productivity, reliability, and improved sustainability Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Fast, professional, and reliable services for our customers represent a major differentiator for Bühler. Services improve the performance and productivity of our customers' existing installed assets by optimizing yield, minimizing energy consumption, reducing waste and water, and by maximizing the valorization of side streams and the overall productivity of their operations. Through all of this, services are crucial enablers to making our customers' plants more efficient and sustainable at the same time.

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. Essential elements of our services are digital platforms such as myBühler and Bühler Insights, and the applications running on them, for example, to calculate, monitor, and report on CO₂e impact along complete value chains. Our monitoring services ensure the optimal operation of process technologies to save energy and water and to reduce waste at any point in time. Retrofit services to renovate our customers’ production assets allow us to realize step changes in sustainability and productivity. The current share of the services and components business is 35.4% of the total Bühler turnover. 

All progress depends on people and their skills, behavior, passion, resilience, and collaboration. For the individual, it means having awareness and the right skills to take necessary decisions and actions. This applies to all levels – from a leader who decides to deploy a carbon-neutral company strategy to an operator who strives to save CO₂e and improve downtimes by running a production line as efficiently as possible. On a company level, it is important that sustainability is fully embedded in all facets of the enterprise, and not just seen as an add-on. On an industry level, it is about collaboration and building ecosystems, as no individual or company alone has the intellectual or financial power to create the impact needed to ensure a high standard of living within the boundaries of our planet. All of this and much more is only achieved with the right people, at the right time, and in the right functions.