Bühler with new Application & Training Centers

Training for customers | Swiss technology group Bühler unveils its new food innovation hub in Uzwil, Switzerland, bringing together a diverse range of capabilities into a single location and setting a new stage for product and process development.

Four Application & Training Centers (ATCs) – Flavor Creation Center, Food Creation Center, Protein Application Center, and Energy Recovery Center – are opening their doors to customers and complement the existing ATCs, such as the Extrusion Application Center. The new ATCs connect the entire value chain and enable a circular economy approach to food production. With Bühler’s cutting-edge infrastructure and team of experts, customers have the ideal environment to master market changes and design the food of the future.

Bühler has Application & Training Centers in 23 locations around the world – some of which cover multiple industrial applications – offering dedicated training for customers and providing them with a collaborative platform to test new product ideas and experiment with product innovations. Over the last years, Bühler’s global network of application centers has expanded, bringing together new business partners, academy, start-ups, and suppliers, with the goal of offering a state-of-the-art setup for customers to drive innovation. In October, along with the Institute of Food Technology (Ital), the FoodTech HUB Latam, Cargill, and Givaudan, Bühler opened the Tropical Food Innovation Lab in Brazil. This innovation ecosystem develops sustainable food and beverages while promoting biodiversity in Brazil.

Enabling innovation through synergies 

With the opening of the new Flavor Creation Center, Food Creation Center, Protein Application Center, and Energy Recovery Center, together with the Application & Training Centers already in operation in Uzwil, this site has become a one-stop shop for Bühler’s customers worldwide. “The opening of the Application & Training Centers is a milestone in our journey to support our customers and partners, to create a more sustainable food system,” says Ian Roberts, CTO at Bühler Group. “At the new ATCs customers have access to a unique combination of technology and expertise.”

Integrated energy efficiency solutions

Together, the Application & Training Centers in Uzwil produce about 550 tons of biomass annually. To make optimum use of the waste and by-products generated by the ATCs, Bühler and its strategic partner, Vyncke, have built the Energy Recovery Center, which serves as a heating facility for Bühler's headquarters. The Energy Recovery Center also works as a demonstration and testing platform for customers who want to reduce CO2 footprint, waste production, and energy costs by using side streams. “The energy generation from biomass as an integrated part of process solutions for food has not been systematically developed and therefore has an enormously high potential, both from a business and sustainability perspective,” says Johannes Wick. “The Bühler-Vyncke Energy Recovery Center is an important step for us in implementing our sustainability goals and is intended to serve as an example for energy recovery options in food and feed production.”