Under the motto “Creating Tomorrow Together,” Bühler will hold its first North American virtual event, focusing on global nutritional challenges and the future of food, while marking the grand opening of the company’s Food Application Center (FAC) in Plymouth, Minnesota (pictured above). The online event will open its virtual doors on Monday, June 15, at 2:30 PM CDT, and run through June 19, culminating with the virtual grand opening of the FAC.
Two billion people each day consume foods produced on Bühler equipment. The Uzwil, Switzerland-headquartered company is a leading supplier of optical sorting technology to the frozen food industry and other processing sectors.
“This new Food Application Center will be an important resource for the North American food industry as we focus on the future of food, reintroducing ancient grains, peas, and lentils into our diets, and innovating around plant-based proteins – all of this addressing the demands of consumers as diets are changing fast,” said Bühler Group CEO Stefan Scheiber. “Many of the global challenges we faced before the coronavirus have only been intensified. Our collective situation has held a magnifying glass to these challenges. It has shown us where we can improve our food supply chain, and our ability to safely and sustainably nourish the world’s growing population.”
To rise to these challenges, Scheiber expects solutions to be developed with Bühler’s customers, “as it is here that we can marry the highly entrepreneurial American spirit with the best of our Swiss heritage as a high quality solution provider for world-class products. This event allows us to stay in close contact and enables companies to learn best practice from one another.”
At the one-week-long Bühler GO!2020 event, nearly 50 speakers from the food processing sector will offer expert insights, best practices and inspiration for its 500 attendees hailing from 17 countries.
Resilience and Collaboration
“We want to show our customers that they can rely on us even in times of crisis, be it for new product developments, for servicing their solutions, or when digitalizing their plants for the ‘new normal’ we are now learning to live in,” said Scheiber.
Bühler GO!2020 highlights the topics of resilience and collaborative innovation. The company has gone digital to support customers in their endeavors. With digital capabilities underpinning a service portfolio increasing yield and capacity, ensuring consistent product quality, providing remote support and reducing unplanned downtime, waste, and energy consumption, Bühler can support its customers efforts to deliver the strong demand they experience today while securing their operational results.
“Innovation remains the lifeblood for sustainable market success, particularly in the food industry,” said Yannick Gaechter, director of the Food Application Center. “New food opportunities are multifaceted and need to be addressed with partners across the whole food value chain. This is where the new FAC comes in.”
He continued: “With the FAC, Bühler is helping to create an innovation ecosystem by providing predominantly North American food companies, start-ups and academic partners with a platform and the capabilities for creating new products and processes that will help address not only current consumer trends, but also global nutrition challenges in a sustainable way.”
Customer Services at the Click of a Button
The myBühler portal offers customers 24/7 access to all the information relevant to their technologies and equipment. It streamlines the purchasing process with pricing and material information and online ordering. But it is far more than a standard customer portal. It is the starting point and the one-stop-shop for all digital solutions, including product information, e-Maintenance, e-Training and e-Service such as Bühler’s Remote Guidance. Smart glasses enable specialists to instruct professionals at customer sites remotely. And the company guarantees first-level-support within two hours.
Education and Training Capabilities for Customers
The Food Application Center in Minnesota, in addition to Bühler’s five other Application Centers in North America, also seeks to fulfill an educational role by providing the tools necessary for clients and partners to respond to a market characterized by rapidly changing trends. They are a place to learn about and innovate around topics such as nutrition, food safety, digitalization, sustainability and mobility.
In business for 160 years and active in 140 countries around the world, the Bühler Group operates a global network of 32 manufacturing sites, 98 service stations and 26 application centers. The Swiss family-owned business employs approximately 12,800 people and generated turnover of CHF 3.3 billion in 2019.
