UZWIL, Switzerland – Bühler is holding its second Virtual World from Monday, March 22 to Wednesday, March 24 – inviting food, feed, and mobility industry players to move from crisis management to an optimistic mindset, building a better future. “Even in these challenging times, we see multifold opportunities for our customers,” says Stefan Scheiber, CEO at Bühler. “The food, feed, and mobility industries have never been more dynamic, embracing new, more sustainable and at the same time more economical products and solutions.” Under the motto “get connected” Bühler is featuring 25 solution areas with many innovations to delight consumers, improve competitiveness and profitability, and become more sustainable, such as by reducing CO2 emissions.
“By multiplying digital connectivity and services and our new range of innovations, we can help cater to market demands and balance the demands of economy, humanity, and nature,” says Ian Roberts, CTO at Bühler. With the Virtual World, Bühler aims to contribute both to the commercial success of its customers and to a healthy planet. The Bühler Virtual World is open to the public and will open its digital doors from March 22-26 at: virtualworld.buhlergroup.com.
The Bühler Virtual World is a unique online platform that integrates 3D visualizations of solutions and technologies
And a virtual event with keynotes and a conference zone with breakout rooms for presentations as well as individual online meetings. As a response to the corona pandemic, Bühler hosted its first Virtual World in May 2020 to engage with customers and partners. Encouraged by the success of this first endeavor, Bühler has expanded the approach building a 3D landscape world featuring all Bühler businesses. The Bühler Virtual World showcases a series of new solutions and product launches designed to delight consumers, strengthen competitiveness, and increase sustainability.
Solutions for sustainable and tasty products, and sweet temptations
Consumer demand for sustainable and healthy food products has been growing robustly in recent years, underlining the opportunity for the food industry to make a positive impact on the environment, yet at the same time addressing changed consumer needs. In the first months of 2021, Bühler provided customers several new opportunities to develop tasty meat alternatives and increase their production capacity. Customers are invited to work together with Bühler and strategic partners such as DIL Deutsches Institut für Lebensmitteltechnik e. V. in Europe or Givaudan in Singapore on the next generation of extruded meat substitutes.
The DIL food-grade application facility will go online shortly (read more about the partnership here) and the joint lab with Givaudan in Singapore will open in the coming weeks. This February, Bühler introduced the PolyCool 1000 cooling die for alternative protein producers (read more about PolyCool 1000 here). In combination with an extruder, it is possible to produce wet-textured proteins based on a wide range of raw materials including soy, pulses, oilseeds, upcycled side streams such as brewer spent grains, as well as newer ingredients such as microalgae, at throughputs of up to 1,000 kilograms per hour.
For chocolate customers, the ChocoX modular moulding line is now commercially available. The first line has already been installed. More about ChocoX can be found here. This completely new line offers flexibility for super-fast adaptations of unlimited variations of chocolate products, addressing the consumer need for individualized products.
Gaining the competitive edge with latest Bühler solutions
The automotive market is bouncing back in 2021, innovating with new casting concepts and solutions for e-mobility, thereby addressing consumer needs for cars with new drive trains and at the same time with lighter and even safer body structures. Body-in-white production in die casting is one of the latest trends. Castings have become ever larger, with increasingly complex geometries. Bühler introduced the Carat 560 and Carat 610 solutions at the end of last year. Furthermore, Bühler announced the Carat 840, which has a locking force of up to 84,000 kN (kilonewtons). This enables aluminum parts to be produced that weigh over 100 kilograms. With a footprint of 55 square meters and a height of six meters, these are the largest die casting technologies in the world, ready to take on latest production concepts from the mobility industry, to produce the cars of the future.
Bühler’s customers range from the largest companies in their industry to up and coming entrepreneurs. For small- to medium-sized beer and malt producers as well as beer start-ups, Bühler is introducing RimoMalt, a flexible concept for modular malt production. Customers can create craft malting solutions and quickly respond to changing demands with new varieties of locally produced beers. RimoMalt is modularly extendable, and the preassembled modules can be quickly installed. With RimoMalt, brewers are operating Bühler’s most modern malting automation system. Media will receive more information on RimoMalt on Wednesday, March 24.
More profitability thanks to sustainable solutions
Bühler is seeing an increasing demand for low-emission coffee production plants. Here, Bühler is considered the preferred solution provider worldwide. Bühler has developed the first extremely low-emission coffee plant with Norwegian coffee producer Joh. Johannson Kaffe. Their new coffee roasting production line, which is already up and running, saves 85% in CO2 compared to their old factory. The Bühler technologies of Joh. Johannson Kaffe’s plant are readily available, proven, and tested in the field (more to follow on Tuesday, March 23).
Bühler offers inks and coatings manufacturers an “unbeatable duo”. The high-performance bead mill MicroMedia Invicta,in combination with the pre-dispersing unit MacroMedia, saves 200 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per ton of ink produced compared to today’s standard processes. At 10,000 tons of ink per year, this corresponds to the CO2 inhaled by 80,000 trees per year or over 8,000 return flights from Zurich to New York.
Services are the game changer
For all these solutions and opportunities, services can be the game changer. Therefore, Bühler has worked out a comprehensive services portfolio focusing on uptime, capacity, and sustainability. Digital plays a crucial role, and all digital services are based on the platforms Bühler Insights and myBühler. Helping optimize the installed base of Bühler customers promises massive savings for factories running today. “Our mix of remote digital services and our decentralized network of service stations and partners makes our customers more successful, as their plants profit from increased uptimes and smart preventative services,” says Johannes Wick, CEO Grains & Food at Bühler. Customers can rely on Bühler services such as TotalCare for inspection and maintenance, RemoteCare for remote support, upgrades to extend the lifetime of customers’ equipment, or CO2 assessment services. One highlight is the SmartRoll service, which connects rolls of a mill to Bühler Insights. Optimizing mills by analyzing data increases yield and product quality in mills while remotely monitoring both condition and performance of rolls (read more here).
Partnerships and solutions are already delivering impact on profit and sustainability
Bühler entered a strategic partnership with Vyncke this March (read more here). Together, the two companies offer integrated solutions to convert biomass side streams into clean process energy while reducing customers’ carbon footprints. “This enables us to offer our customers low- to zero-carbon food solutions,” says Johannes Wick. In many countries, the reduction of CO2 footprints is about to become a priority, as regulators draw up new laws and incentive programs to support such type of plants. The first joint malting project for Uruguay’s Malteria Oriental S.A. gets by with a 30% smaller energy system. The recovery of thermal energy saves 35,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year compared to standard operating procedures in Uruguay, and this at the same time turns into a massive economic profit.
Bühler and Balaguer Rolls from Spain signed a cooperation agreement this month for design and supply of SmartRolls and services of the highest quality standard. These enable remote condition- and performance monitoring of the rolls. The service of the SmartRolls is provided via Bühler Insights (read more about this cooperation here).
Bühler ‘s responses to long Covid-19 in the business world
The coronavirus pandemic and its economic consequences will keep the world busy for a long time to come. During the past year, Bühler has still been able to offer its customers worldwide, physical and digital services that have made their solutions more energy efficient and cost effective. The Bühler Virtual World also showcases innovative solutions that address the pressing need to protect the climate, while also generating positive economic impact. Stefan Scheiber emphasizes: “What we present here together with our customers has proven effective and is already saving resources. We can scale these solutions very swiftly together with our partners. By doing so, we combine the sustainability aspect with economic profits.”
Please access Bühler Virtual World here. You can view the Bühler Virtual World event agenda here.
