From Left to Right: Bühler Group CEO Stefan Scheiber’s opening speech. Ian Roberts, Bühler CTO, told delegates that Bühler is now able to
provide a service by working with customers to quantify their CO2e footprint.
Uzwil (Switzerland), July 1, 2022 – In a demonstration of the commitment of businesses to be at the forefront of tackling the climate crisis to protect and restore nature and biodiversity, and close the gap in wealth distribution, 1,000 representatives of the world’s leading companies from 95 countries gathered in Uzwil at the Bühler Group’s global headquarters this week to discuss the urgent need for business to come together to accelerate the transition towards sustainability. Representing companies that between them feed 4 billion of the world’s population, and who move 2 billion, delegates attending the Bühler Networking Days 2022 event on June 27-28, heard from leading academics, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators about how businesses can best meet today’s global challenges.
Opening the event, Bühler Group CEO, Stefan Scheiber, told
guests from the food, animal feed, and mobility sectors that despite businesses
recently facing myriad obstacles, the examples of vaccine research, advances in
digitalization and the development of communication at scale during the
lockdown all demonstrated the capacity of business to rise to global challenges
when required. “We have experienced the power of science and innovation with
industries collaborating at a new scale,” said Scheiber. “In our industries –
in animal nutrition, food, and mobility – the innovation rate has never been as
high as it is today, which creates impact because we need new technologies and
widespread collaboration to tackle new challenges, and at the same time secure
the future of our businesses in a responsible way. We need technologies, we
need collaboration, and responsible leadership to shape the future.”
Bühler Group Networking Days was launched in 2016 and is
held every three years. The 2022 event with the motto “accelerating impact
together” focused on leadership, the need for corporate purpose, education,
technology, and innovation, along with examples of how companies are leveraging
technology to protect biodiversity, improve food security, and promote social
equality.
Impact through
purpose
Ranjay Gulati, Harvard Professor of Business Administration, and author of
“Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies”, warned
company leaders not to get wrapped up in complex metrics around Environmental,
Social and Governance (ESG) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) when
companies achieve far more impact by having a clearly articulated social
purpose. “The first way in which purpose can accelerate impact is by providing
direction,” explained Gulati. “Purpose creates a compass and an oriented
framework around where you are going in turbulent times when you have lots of
things going on around you.” He added that focusing on social purpose also
motivates and inspires employees while a clearly expressed business motivation
often provides useful clarity and orientation for business partners. Gulati
cites Bühler in his book on deep purpose as an example of a company that has
successfully adopted this approach. Once a social purpose is decided on, it
must be properly explained to all stakeholders both internally as well as
externally, so that it becomes part of the corporate DNA and can be expressed
in all of a company’s actions.
Another example of a company that has embraced Gulati’s
philosophy is Dole Sunshine Company which defines its purpose as creating “a
more equitable world where everyone irrespective of their age, race, income,
location or gender has the right to nutrition that comes from the goodness of
the earth.” Speaking at the event, President of Dole Sunshine Company, Pier
Luigi Sigismondi, outlined some of the actions the agricultural multinational
corporation, formed in 1851, has recently taken. “We at Dole came out of 30
years of being a victim of being focused on short-termism and thinking the only
responsibility we had was to deliver profit,” said Sigismondi. Describing how
the company had transformed during the global pandemic he added: “In the
Covid-19 crisis we asked ourselves: ‘What can we do to drive our business with
success and with purpose in a way that we can live with our conscience and be
meaningful for all of us?’” Over the past two years, Dole has partnered with
NGOs, businesses, and start-ups to drive change by improving nutrition and
sustainability levels. Initiatives include a target to remove fossil-based
plastics from packaging by 2025, turning fruit waste into fibers to create
fashion products, improving accessibility to nutritious fruit-based snacks for
children, and raising public health awareness by projecting malnutrition facts
onto the sides of building and trash cans in New York, Los Angeles, and
Baltimore. Dole Sunshine Company is about to replicate the awareness-raising
campaign in London.
Strengthening local
supply chains
Swiss entrepreneur and owner of CN & Partners AG, Christoph Nyfeler,
told the conference about opening the first commercial malting house based in
Switzerland for 90 years. Despite a challenging market he plans to leverage the
circular economy to help him develop local supply chains by producing
plant-based meat with the waste material from the brewing process and launch
Circular Food Solutions Switzerland. He has teamed up with a Bühler spin-off to
produce plant-based meat from spent grain. “All malt is transported into
Switzerland as it has almost no value, and yet I believe local production to be
part of today’s solutions,” explained Nyfeler. “Local production is more
expensive, but if I can buy the spent grain back, I can give an economic benefit
to the breweries.”
Taking leadership to
create impact
In a session on how good business leadership is needed to mitigate climate
change, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said that in uncertain times
leadership qualities could be distilled down to three key attributes: he told
delegates that when assessing future leaders at Microsoft he looked for their
ability to generate energy, deliver results under constraints, and create
clarity when none exists. “We live in a complex uncertain world, there will
always be ambiguity in our work, true leaders always bring clarity and make a
call even during uncertain times,” said Nadella.
Speaking in the same session keynote speaker Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, the German multinational software corporation with over 400,000 customers globally, spoke of the need for leaders to thoroughly understanding their industry and business, especially when it comes to complexity within supply chains. “We are all on social media sharing data all the time and yet when it comes to businesses, how much do we understand our supply chains? I am convinced this is where we must come together to share data and trace material flows,” explained Klein. “End-to-end traceability means you can think about how to measure demand in real time and adjust your inventory right down to the raw material.” He added that it is only when supply chains are fully understood that it is possible to improve standards on issues like human rights and properly address Scope 3 emissions.
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