Bühler’s 'Scale-Up Day' connects industry giants with high-impact startups ready for global growth

Swiss technology group Bühler has moved to accelerate industrial innovation by hosting its Scale-Up Day, held on Wednesday 25 June as part of Bühler’s Networking Days at its headquarters in Uzwil, Switzerland. The initiative gathered 21 scaleups – mature startups with validated technologies – and connected them directly with Bühler’s global network of customers, partners, and investors. The goal: to transform pressing industry challenges into collaborative business opportunities.

“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.”

Scale-Up Day was designed to create more than inspiration. Bühler focused on identifying companies whose solutions address well-defined industrial needs in food systems, sustainability, and climate mitigation. The event enabled these scale-ups not only to showcase their technologies but also to engage in concrete discussions about partnerships, pilot projects, and industrial-scale deployment.

“We wanted our customers to walk away with not just inspiration, but action points and real partnerships that lead to real deployment,” said Duvanel. “At the same time, the scaleups had a unique opportunity to connect with potential multiplication partners – those who can help grow their businesses while scaling the impact of their solutions.”

Unlike pitch events for early-stage start-ups, Scale-Up Day concentrated on businesses already operational, funded, and expanding. The participating companies were chosen for their readiness to scale and the relevance of their technologies to Bühler’s customer base.

The selection process spanned six to eight weeks and involved collaboration with venture capital partners including Big Idea Ventures, SOSV, the Swiss Entrepreneur Fund, Synthesis Capital, ICOS Capital, and the MassChallenge Switzerland accelerator. Together, they reviewed candidates for technical maturity, market traction, and the capacity to deliver at scale.

“We look for big ideas which, if we can make them a reality, will completely transform the world,” said Andrew Ive, Founder & Managing General Partner of Big Idea Ventures. “We believe that working with the best start-ups and bringing them together with the best corporates allows us to scale up these technologies that are going to have a positive global impact.”

The final group of scale-ups represented innovation across three critical fronts: food systems transformation, including novel ingredients and advanced processing; climate change mitigation, such as industrial decarbonization and sustainable energy solutions; and sustainable materials, including biomanufactured and low-impact materials ready for industrial adoption.

Scale-Up Day took place within Bühler’s broader Networking Days 2025, a triennial industry event that this year attracted over 1,200 decision-makers from sectors including food, feed, sustainable mobility, and advanced materials. With the 2025 theme “Multiplying impact together,” Networking Days emphasized technologies that can drive sustainable business success at scale. For the selected scaleups, the event offered rare direct access to senior leaders from global industrial players.

Several participating scale-ups shared their goals for joining Scale-Up Day. Yonatan Golan, CEO & Co-Founder of Israel-based Brevel, said his company is looking for partners to expand both market reach and technical capabilities. Brevel produces food ingredients using a proprietary illuminated fermentation process that allows it to cultivate microalgae and light-dependent bacterial strains. The company has already commercialized a functional protein capable of replacing eggs in multiple food applications.

“We came to the Scale-Up Day because we want to connect with partners in the food industry who could use our products, and food tech companies who could help us develop our range of ingredients,” Golan said. “We also want to engage with industrial partners who can help us scale up and multiply our technology around the world.”

Rondo Energy, based in California, develops a heat storage battery that converts excess renewable electricity into high-grade industrial heat. The system stores energy in refractory bricks heated to over 1,000°C, providing a storage density greater than lithium batteries.

“At the Scale-Up Day we are interested in meeting users who could use our plug-and-play technology in their operations,” said John O’Donnell, Chief Innovation Officer at Rondo. “And in working with partners to explore the way their processes could be adapted to use clean renewable heat.”

From Suzhou, China, Farmtory has developed a cost-effective biomanufacturing system for producing peptides. The company’s offerings include brazzein, a protein-based sweetener found naturally in oubli fruit from Central Africa, and peptides that enhance salt perception, enabling food producers to reduce sodium content.

“We are here to talk to anyone who might benefit from our peptide production capabilities,” said James Wu, CEO & Co-Founder of Farmtory. “And we are also looking for partners to help us meet our ambition of producing a comprehensive range of dairy-replacement proteins at large scale.”

Bühler sees events like Scale-Up Day as essential to fostering the innovation ecosystem required to tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges.

“What makes our approach unique is our culture of innovation, experimentation and openness, and our willingness to share our ecosystem with our customers,” said Ian Roberts, CTO at Bühler. “The Scale-Up Day had the potential to create powerful, lasting partnerships – connecting companies in our customer base, which have big supply chains and global reach, with a curated group of smaller businesses with great ideas and proven technologies. That’s the sort of marriage that creates multiplication.”