Annual Report 2022
Annual Report 2022
Annual Report 2022
Our strategy
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.
Annual Report 2022
Our strategy
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.
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.
The 6 key elements of our strategy:
- We drive customer success: We strive to create the best technologies to make our customers more successful in very dynamic market environments.
- We create impact for a better world: The demand for sustainable solutions is revolutionizing our markets in the food, feed, and mobility industries, and as a technology provider with a clear aim to contribute to tackling climate change, we see ourselves as a driving force for the transition ahead.
- We commit to greater access to affordable and healthy food: With our food and feed business solutions and our focus on safety, we contribute to a better life.
- We want to protect the environment with energy-efficient cars, buildings, and machinery: With the solutions of our Advanced Materials business, we lower the energy consumption of various applications, most importantly in the mobility industry.
- We offer the best training for our employees: Since its founding, people have been the top priority at Bühler – from education and training to career development, health, and safety.
- We remain independent as a company by achieving sustainable success: The freedom of being family owned enables us to set a long-term strategy for sustainable company development.
Our sustainability goals
More than ever, the world demands a turnaround in CO₂e emissions, loss of biodiversity and distribution of wealth. Every study published in the reporting year, such as the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), concluded that the condition of our planet and societies are 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 cutting emissions down to net zero.
We have for many years focused our research and development (R&D) efforts on improving both commercial and sustainability performance. We have committed to the following:
- We committed to developing a pathway to achieve a 60% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in our own operations by 2030.*
- 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 proactively collaborate with suppliers to reduce climate impacts throughout the value chain. As a relevant player in the global food, feed, and mobility value chains – around 2 billion people get their daily food processed on Bühler equipment, and the mobility of around 1 billion people is based on parts made with our technologies – we have taken on this responsibility. Being a family-owned company allows us to reinvest most of our profits in innovations for this purpose – and to scale them as fast as possible within our innovative ecosystem and with our customers. In this sense, sustainability is embedded in all functions, responsibilities, and activities of our company.
There are three key elements that contribute to the upcoming transition of our industries: Solutions, Services, and People.
* Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scopes 1 & 2, 2019 baseline.
Solutions
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.
Services
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.
People
All progress depends on people, their skills, behavior, collaboration, and the ecosystems we build. On the individual level, it is about awareness and the right skills to take necessary decisions and actions. This applies to all levels – from a leader who might decide to deploy a carbon-neutral company strategy to an operator who is keen on saving CO₂e by running a machine as efficiently as possible. On a company level, it is important that sustainability is not seen as an add-on but is fully embedded in all facets of the enterprise. On an industry level, it is all 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.
Our values
To give orientation to our employees and lay the foundation for a corporate culture that supports our endeavors we established our values of trust, ownership, and passion (TOP). Trust relates to integrity, partnership skills, and the credibility required for Bühler to form collaborative networks with customers, start-ups, academia, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to address global challenges. Ownership is about taking responsibility for decisions taken in the interest of our customers, and passion drives people at Bühler to live their intentions, to learn each day, to support others, and to drive success.
Education and training
People development has always been the essence of Bühler. We have a strategy of people development, starting from apprenticeship education, and internal programs, to schools and Application & Training Centers for our customers. Our company was one of the first to start systematic vocational training. Since then, we have continued to develop and expand our education and training system, both internally and externally. Bühler provides apprenticeships for 500 apprentices globally and has trained over 8,250 since 1915. We run schools for milling, grain, rice, and cocoa processing along with Application & Training Centers around the world.
Customer proximity
Our customers are key to our success, and we strive to be a trusted and reliable partner that maximizes business outcomes for them with innovative technologies, processes, services, training, and partnerships. Our global setup continues to prove its value for our customers, and thereby for Bühler. With our 105 service stations, 30 manufacturing sites, 91 sales offices, and Application & Training Centers in 23 locations around the globe, we are close to our customers and support them with new innovations and services to make the most of their asset base. This customer proximity enables Bühler to support its customers and deliver on promises even in highly dynamic markets.
105
Service stations
30
Manufacturing sites
91
Sales offices
23
Locations with Application & Training Centers
Ecosystem of collaboration and innovation
We believe that collaboration between industry players, academia, start-ups, and NGOs is essential to develop the solutions required to meet the needs of a growing global population sustainably. We have therefore established an ecosystem of collaboration and innovation. We connect our ecosystem partners with the process and technology know-how and experience of Bühler employees. The key to unlocking the value of the external ecosystem is the openness and capability of our employees. To give this ecosystem a regular focal point, we have established the Bühler Networking Days, which we host every three years in Uzwil, Switzerland.
Sustainable family ownership
Bühler is an independent, family-owned enterprise in the fifth generation. Our strategy is founded in this set-up and the premise of its continuation.
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Gupfenstrasse 5
Uzwil
9240
Switzerland
