Over 1,200 business leaders from the food, feed, and sustainable mobility, and materials sectors gathered at Bühler’s headquarters in Uzwil, Switzerland, to address the urgent challenge of building successful businesses that feed and move 10 billion people sustainably by 2050.
Many key solutions are in place that meet these challenges. What is needed now is to multiply their impact at scale. On the first two days, representatives from industry, business, and academia exchanged practical solutions to ongoing and emerging sustainability challenges at the event a unique platform designed to advance innovative approaches, foster meaningful partnerships, and put a spotlight on education and leadership. With the theme “Multiplying impact together,” the Networking Days 2025 highlighted the courage to navigate uncertainty and the solutions available now to build successful companies that bring positive impact at massive scale. The Networking Days 2025 was the fourth Bühler Group Networking Days event. The Swiss-based technology group has convened leaders from the industries it serves once every three years since 2016. Attendees at this year‘s event traveled from 90 countries and six continents.
Speaking at the event, Bühler Group CEO Stefan Scheiber described the power of collaboration and cooperation to multiply the impact of innovation. “Every breakthrough, partnership, and bold decision has the potential to create ripples spreading knowledge, inspiring action, and driving progress,” he said. “But their true power lies in the multiplier effect: When these ripples connect, they create waves of change. By working together, businesses and industries don’t just add incrementally to progress they accelerate it by compounding their influence and scaling solutions far beyond what any single effort could achieve.”
Ian Roberts, Bühler Group CTO added: “It is so clear now that we must act with focus and collaboration to bring the impact necessary to preserve the healthy state of our planet. I am energised by the potential and willingness shown by our 1,200 guests not to simply talk, but to build concrete actions and to share what they have already achieved to accelerate group learning and impact multiplication.”
On the third day, the Scale-Up Day brought together 21 carefully selected, high-impact scale-ups mature start-ups with proven technologies to connect directly with Bühler’s global customers, partners, and investors. With companies focused on food system transformation, climate mitigation, and sustainable materials, Scale-Up Day created a platform for building partnerships and multiplying real-world solutions.
“Innovation doesn‘t happen in isolation. These companies are solving problems our customers face today, or will face soon,” said Thierry Duvanel, Director of Innovation at Bühler North America. “By giving them this platform, we hope to spark new partnerships, fresh ideas, and real business opportunities.” The aim of Scale-Up Day was to help solve real problems facing Bühler’s customers.
By selecting companies that address defined industry challenges in food, sustainability, and climate solutions, the event created opportunities for synergies, partnerships, and concrete action.Whether that’s joint go-to-market, deployment with customers or access to financing, this global network offers huge potential for multiplication enabling scale-ups to grow their businesses while multiplying the impact of their solutions.
The key message at the event was that sustainability is a sound business strategy that drives profitable growth and long-term resilience, and is the outcome of strong leadership. Professor Johan Rockström, a leading expert on global sustainability and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, highlighted the urgent need for industry to operate within Earth’s safe limits. He said: “When a decision improves your performance, attracts talent, opens new markets, or enhances resilience, communicate that clearly: Show that sustainability is not a burden it’s a competitive advantage.” Speakers echoed the magnitude and urgency of the challenge, calling for accelerated innovation in digital tools, process technologies, and business models to deliver more value with fewer resources. Laurent Freixe, CEO of Nestlé, emphasised: “As the key players in the food system, we collectively have power. We have the ability to address many issues the planet is facing, and we should be taking the responsibility that comes with it very seriously.”
In a year marked by political and economic turbulence, speakers emphasised the urgent role of industry in tackling the world‘s most pressing challenges. In such times, it is easy for business leaders to retreat into caution, but building resilient, future-ready businesses requires courage and decisive action. “The currency to survive in an era of uncertainty is courage,” said Ranjay Gulati, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, in his keynote.
At the 2019 Networking Days, Bühler promised to have solutions ready to multiply by 2025 to reduce energy, waste, and water in its customers‘ value chains by 50%. Since then, Bühler has invested nearly CHF 500 m in research and development to deliver on that promise. It has analysed the savings potential of 15 key value chains and developed new technologies and solutions. Multiplying these approaches across companies and industries requires solutions and services that support business growth while lowering footprint. This means enabling sales, profitability, job creation, and long-term resilience to address the needs of society while reducing emissions, land use, water use, and impacts on land and nature.
Bühler supports its customers in growing their businesses while lowering their footprint in many ways. From offering new state-of-the-art solutions to optimising current systems through services, including machinery refurbishment, digital process control, and predictive maintenance. These services lead to higher productivity and yields, resulting in better returns on investment alongside positive environmental impacts.
According to Bühler’s value chain analysis, when combined with other technologies and solutions beyond Bühler’s portfolio, peak savings potential exceeds 80% in some value chains. The CO2e reduction potential is 71% for processing aluminium into finished products, 77% for transforming cocoa beans into chocolate, and 65% for processing rice.
