interpack 2023: Bühler to showcase full suite of offerings – from process engineering through innovation to maintenance
Bühler is to use interpack 2023 to demonstrate it is back in full swing under the motto ‘Driving the future of food – with sustainable solutions,’ to not only propose solutions that address key sustainability issues, food security, and consumer trends, but also inspire customers to innovate.
“We support them in every step of their journey, from the project idea, conception, to product development, we develop and deliver the solutions, and move on together with services and maintenance of the lines,” says Thomas Bischof, global head of business development consumer foods at Bühler Group.
Together with its customers and partners, with the common desire to accelerate impact across industries and on global scale, Bühler has committed to having solutions ready to multiply by 2025 that reduce energy, waste, and water by 50% in the value chains of its customers. It has also developed a pathway to achieve a 60% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in its operations by 2030, meaning Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scopes 1 & 2, against a 2019 baseline.
Services
For services that drive energy and resource efficiency, Bühler will demonstrate the role it can play in reducing costs, increasing food and feed safety, boosting capacity, but also in improving energy and resource efficiency with PastaPro.
Bühler’s digital process service regulates the water in the production of dough. It addresses moisture fluctuations in raw materials and ensures a consistent quality of the product entering the drying process in real time. DryingPro Moisture Control is another example of digital services that has a positive impact as it improves energy efficiency by making correct dryer control adjustments quickly and reliably.
Sustainable production
Wafers have become more popular among consumers over the last few years as they are a convenient food, ready to eat and easily accessible. This market has been driven by an increasing demand for healthy snacks. At Interpack, Bühler will launch a new wafer baking plate, which brings about a perfect fusion of stable frame and innovative inlet for exceptional even heat distribution. More details will be presented on May 5, 2023.
Another highlight is Bühler’s SWAKT-Eco wafer baking oven, a premium solution for the fully automatic industrial production of flat and hollow wafers, designed to reduce gas consumption and emissions. Two electrical tunnel baking ovens – DirectBake E and Turbu E − are sustainable alternatives for the industrial production of biscuits, cookies, crackers, and cakes as they are developed to achieve highest product quality with reduced carbon emissions during the baking process.
Moving to the cocoa, coffee, and nuts segment, Bühler is presenting its coffee roaster Roastmaster20, which is the first solution to feature Bühler’s new software Playone, a web-based machine control system. With Playone, it is now possible to improve operation with real-time information, increasing monitoring, and adjusting the recipe in a more consistent way.
For the world of confectionery, Bühler will display its ChocoX solution, a chocolate modular moulding line that combines flexibility and agility in production and hygienic design, resulting in significantly lower operational costs. Thanks to integrated control boxes that replace all central switch cabinets, the new ChocoX comes with a reduced footprint.
Greater energy efficiency is one of the prime benefits of the new hammer mill Granulex 5 series as well, with 10% reduction in energy consumption per ton, and in some cases the reduction can be as much as 30%. Launched in 2022, it combines a groundbreaking modular system that offers flexibility and energy savings while maintaining the highest product quality and safety standards.
Plant-based alternatives
Admittedly “active” in the field of plant-based alternatives for a long time, Bühler is bringing its expertise and cutting-edge technology to support the needs of customers.
Christoph Vogel, head of business unit human nutrition at Bühler Group says Bühler is offering a complete palette of solutions for the protein value chain from bean to burger. Customers can also test new products, shapes, recipes, textures, flavours, technologies and optimise production process in one of Bühler’s application centres worldwide.
Worldwide presence with Application Centers
Bühler has Application & Training Centers in 23 countries and keeps expanding this network. The Application Centers work as a collaborative platform to inspire and innovate. In June 2022, Bühler announced a strategic partnership with German engineering company endeco to drive forward pulse processing, meet growing demand for alternative sources of protein, and develop pulse processing solutions with a significantly lower CO2 footprint. The companies are building together the new Protein Application Center at Bühler’s headquarters in Uzwil to offer customers end-to-end solutions, from bean to burger, including all wet and dry processing. The opening is planned for the last quarter of 2023.
The new Cocoa Application Center, based in Bühler’s headquarters in Uzwil, Switzerland, will also open its doors to customers later this year. “With our brand-new flavour creation center for cocoa, nuts, and coffee, we showcase an integrated factory from raw cocoa beans to moulded products, our proven nut expertise, which spans the entire range of nuts processing, or our ultimate coffee passion in roasting and grinding,” explains Manuel Hoehener, head of R&D Chocolate & Coffee at Bühler Group.
To support the customers throughout the entire production process, Bühler is also building a new Food Creation Center in Uzwil. The center combines the best of Bühler’s solutions (in bakery, wafers, bars, biscuits) and showcases the future of food in an integrated way. The Center will open its doors in the third quarter of 2023.
