During the Networking Days 2019, Bühler raised its sustainability targets with the aim to reduce energy, water, and waste in our customers’ value chains by 50 % by 2025. To achieve these targets, we identified five core topics and four enablers. We will only be able to reach our ambitious goals by applying a holistic approach across value chains and by harnessing the power of all the enablers.
According to the United Nations, we will have to be able to feed 10 billion people by 2050. To make it even more challenging, we will have significantly less land to do so. That’s why in 2019 we invested 4.5 % of our R&D budget into food trends such as alternative proteins. We also intensified our collaborative approach by joining the Future Food Initiative launched by ETH Zurich and EPFL.
To reach the goal of the Paris Agreement of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 % by 2030 compared to 1990, energy consumption in industry plays a key role. In 2019, we invested CHF 149 million to find new ways of making our customers’ value chains more energy efficient, among other initiatives. Our new Fusion die-casting platform, for example, can reduce energy requirements by up to 40 %.
The transportation sector accounts for over 20 % of global CO2 emissions. We address this issue by making cars lighter with our die-casting systems, and electric vehicles more energy efficient with our solution for electrode slurry. In addition, we are driving collaboration between industry and academia by bringing stakeholders together, for example in our new Die Casting Technology Center in Uzwil, Switzerland.
Agriculture uses 71 % of the global fresh water supplies. To feed up to 10 billion people sustainably by 2050 and achieve our goals of reducing water usage by 50 % by 2025, we must drastically improve efficiency. We see great potential in applying steam instead of water in food processing, as seen in our Prime Masa process for manufacturing Nixtamal corn flour, which reduces water usage by a staggering 90 %.
30 % of food is lost or wasted from field to fork. Meanwhile, an estimated 840 million people are suffering from hunger. We continue to improve our solutions to prevent losses in food processing: from intake to cleaning, sorting, storing, processing, and bagging. Our LumoVision, for example, identifies and removes cancer-causing, aflatoxin-infected grains and reduces yield loss to below 5 %.
Education and knowledge transfer are in Bühler’s DNA. From vocational education and digital training to hands-on learning in our application centers, we continue to harness the power of sharing our 160 years of experience with employees and customers.
The motto of the Bühler Networking Days 2019 was “Creating tomorrow together”. With our new CUBIC innovation campus, the global network of application centers, and our Networking Days concept, we want to establish an innovation ecosystem which enables the rapid transformation needed to reach our goals.
We can only achieve our goals by driving innovation. During the Networking Days 2019, we launched 20 innovations, and our network with start-ups, academia, and close collaboration with customers allows us to live up to our vision of “Innovations for a better world.”
Digitalizing processes is key to achieving our sustainability goals. 85 % of our technologies are able to connect to our digital platform Bühler Insights, which allows customers to improve the performance of their machines and reap both sustainability and financial benefits.
