Interview: Namık Kemal Parlak

In an exclusive interview with Miller Magazine, Samuel Schär, who took over as CEO of Bühler Group in January, shares his vision for the company and the global milling industry. Emphasizing continuity, service, sustainability and automation, Schär says milling will remain Bühler’s most important business, while Africa, the Middle East and India are emerging as the company’s fastest-growing market.

Samuel Schär
CEO of Bühler Group

The global grain and milling industry is facing a period of profound transformation. Sustainability, energy efficiency, artificial intelligence, supply chain resilience, shifting investment priorities and regional food security are becoming key factors in how millers plan, operate and grow.

In this exclusive interview with Miller Magazine, Samuel Schär, CEO of Bühler Group, reflects on his first months in the role and describes his leadership as a continuation of Bühler’s long-term direction. He explains why milling remains the company’s most important business and outlines how service, sustainability, automation and the rapid growth of Africa, the Middle East and India are shaping Bühler’s vision for the future of the global milling industry.

In a world marked by geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruption, he sees growing demand for local storage, grain handling, flour milling and pasta production capacity, arguing that crises can create both risks and investment opportunities. “Millers are feeding the people of this planet,” Schär says. “We are very proud to be a partner they could rely on in the past, can rely on today and will be able to rely on in the future.”

Mr. Schär, you took over as CEO of Bühler Group in January. Five months into the role, what have been your main observations so far? Have your initial priorities changed in any way?

I have indeed been CEO of Bühler since January 1, but I have been with Bühler since 2002 and a member of the Executive Board since the beginning of 2013. So, basically, I have already spent 13 years as part of the executive team. I spent 10 years leading our Advanced Materials business and then five years leading our worldwide services and sales organization.

So, my transition to CEO is not about a totally new person coming in with a completely different set of ideas. It is really about continuity. I think this resonates strongly in our industry, where many companies are family-owned and major investments are often made only once per generation.

The ideas with which I started my job as the new CEO over the last five months have not changed. They have remained constant. What I have had the privilege to do is to work with our worldwide team on drafting our new strategy. We have a planning cycle of five years, so we are now talking about our strategy up to 2030. We developed this together with our worldwide teams across the businesses and functions. It was a very rewarding process, because it allowed us to bring people along and jointly define where we want to take the company.

When we talk about continuity, Bühler has a very long history. But the milling industry itself also has very deep family traditions. How do you see Bühler’s own continuity in relation to its customers?

I think we would not be doing justice to the millers if we said no company can compete with Bühler in terms of continuity. Some milling families have been running their mills for 11, 12 or even 13 generations. I think we cannot compete with the millers in that respect. Bühler is only 166 years old. We are now in the fifth generation of ownership, and the sixth generation is already waiting. I am only the seventh CEO in Bühler’s history. I understand that in the milling industry there are companies with a much longer tradition. So we try to be as resilient and as historically rooted as our customers.

MILLING IS AT THE CORE OF BÜHLER

Food and Feed remains Bühler’s historical backbone, while Advanced Materials represents a high-tech growth frontier. Which business areas do you see as Bühler’s main growth engines over the next years?

For us, the grain milling business is our most important and largest business. It is at the core of Bühler and will remain so in the future. We are growing in milling, which is fantastic, because we can install new milling capacities in various geographies. So milling is still growing.

If you ask me where the growth opportunities are, one major area is service. We want to set an even stronger focus on helping our customers get the maximum out of their assets throughout the full lifecycle of their operations. This includes topics such as ensuring plant availability and uptime, optimizing yield, and optimizing energy consumption.

We believe we have very strong solutions and people that we can bring to the table. On the one hand, they help improve the performance of the asset; on the other hand, they help make a contribution toward sustainability.

This aspect of combining sustainability with business is central to our approach. We believe that business and sustainability are the same thing, because if sustainability does not finance itself, it will not work. This is something we stand for, and it is how we support our customers in many aspects.

You mentioned my past in Advanced Materials. If you look at the developments we currently see in artificial intelligence, they are driving massive investments in semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Bühler operates in only a very small area of the semiconductor market where optical coatings are required, for instance for lenses and optical components used in lithography systems that transfer circuit patterns onto semiconductor wafers. For example, in May 2026 alone, we sold as many of these machines as we did during the whole of 2025.

So we have ample growth opportunities. They typically come in waves, and the key capability of Bühler is to be able to capture such a wave when it comes.

Last year, for example, we saw a cocoa wave in Africa, where many entrepreneurs invested in local cocoa processing. That is a good thing to have processing in the countries where cocoa is grown. Only when you have a certain setup and a certain size can you capture such waves.

SUSTAINABILITY AND BUSINESS GO HAND IN HAND

Sustainability is central to Bühler’s strategy. At Bühler Networking Days last year, you described sustainability and profitability as two sides of the same coin. How do you prioritize sustainability investments when many customers are also facing high energy costs, tighter financing conditions and growing supply chain risks linked to geopolitical tensions?

Let me start with sustainability and the issues in the mills themselves.  When you have high energy costs and you can improve the energy efficiency of your mill, this translates immediately into a better margin. This is how sustainability and business go hand in hand. If I can improve the energy efficiency of a mill, I make a contribution to sustainability, but at the same time I reduce my input costs and therefore make a contribution to my bottom line.

The same is true for yield. If I improve yield and extraction, I can increase the amount of products I get from the same amount of raw material, and that translates into additional profit. 

So raw materials and energy, being the highest input cost factors, are directly linked to improving the bottom line. That is why we say the two go hand in hand.

LOCAL FOOD PROCESSING GAINS IMPORTANCE IN TIMES OF CRISIS

With respect to geopolitical tensions, this is on the one side a risk, but on the other side also an opportunity. What we see is that in regions facing heightened uncertainty, there is a rising interest in investing in additional silo capacity and additional local food processing capacity. We believe that in the aftermath of conflict, we will see a wave of such investments into storage, drying, logistics and grain handling facilities, as well as in local flour mills and local production lines.

When things get tough, there seem to be three things that people stockpile. One is toilet paper, which is sometimes hard to understand. The next is water in plastic bottles, which is very easy to understand. And the third one is pasta, because pasta is a very delicious food that can be stored under dry conditions, without a fridge, for a very long time. You can cook it with water and prepare a very good meal. Whenever there is a crisis in the world, we see pasta going up. So there is always this dualism of risk and opportunity.

With respect to the current crisis, I must say that the Global North can learn a lot from entrepreneurs in areas and geographies affected by crisis. They tend to be very resourceful and very resilient. They find opportunities and ways even under uncertainty. 

It is unbelievable what is still possible when there is a will. We see this in many instances when we have the pleasure of supporting and serving our customers, including in regions where operating conditions are challenging, and access is not always straightforward.

This is one of Bühler’s strengths, with its industrial setup that is highly localized around the world. We are active in 140 countries, and therefore we have been able to build experience in supporting our customers even when conditions are tough.

I am fascinated by how our customers are investing and finding ways even when the signs point toward crisis. Let me give you an example. Some entrepreneurs, when there is a crisis, do what every regular person does: they postpone non-necessary investments. Like if you want to buy a new car and there is a crisis, you postpone buying the new car. But some entrepreneurs use exactly the moment of crisis to say: now I invest, because now is the time to win market share. Market shares are not distributed in times when everything is in steady state. Market shares are won or lost when there is some sort of crisis. We see both behaviors, and both have their right to exist. I am not judging one as bad and the other as good. But this is something we can learn from.

MILLS ARE BECOMING LARGER AND SMARTER

How has the grain and milling industry changed in recent years, especially from a technology and processing perspective? Where do you see the next major wave of innovation?

What we experience and see is that mills are becoming larger and larger. 20 years ago, we were mainly selling mills with a capacity of 200 or 300 tonnes per day. Now it is often 750 tonnes per day or above milling capacity that we sell. This reflects the ongoing consolidation of the industry and the trend toward larger mills.

We also see that more and more control loops are being added, such as ash control loops to manage ash content. More automation is being introduced, including smart automation systems that combine various parameters and based on those parameters, either automatically optimize mill performance or provide suggestions on how the mill can be optimized.

To give one example, I refer to our TVM product, the Temperature and Vibration Management system. Inside the roll, we have sensors that can measure vibration and temperature. When a roller stand risks running dry, the system automatically detects that and gives a warning.

BÜHLER SEES STRONG GROWTH MOMENTUM IN AFRICA’S MILLING INDUSTRY

Africa is increasingly becoming a key focus for the global grain and milling industry. Consumption is growing, while local production, processing capacity and milling investment are gaining more attention. What role do you see for Bühler in helping African millers build more efficient, scalable and resilient processing capacity?

Thank you for this question. I was hoping that you would ask it. For us, Africa, the Middle East and India is the fastest-growing market. Last year, it was our second-biggest market when looking at the world regions. This year the race is on. Maybe it could even become the biggest region. We will see. This is not yet a given.

But we can fully confirm that the dynamics in Africa are very positive in terms of additional capacity being installed. We help entrepreneurs, our customers who are installing this capacity, to start up these mills seamlessly. We support them with our very dense service network. So if something happens, we are there. Already today, across Africa, the Middle East and India, we have 1,500 people working for Bühler and supporting our customers.

Last but not least, no mill can be operated without skilled operators. We have our African Milling School in Nairobi, where we are educating the millers of the future. Over the last decade-plus, we have educated more than 1,000 head millers or millers in that school. Training more than 1,000 operators of mills has had a significant impact on the industry. 

Beyond that, we have invested in a research and training center in Kano, Nigeria, focused on supporting customers processing local crops and local grains. This has a significant impact, as our customers can develop processes and products that can help reduce the need for wheat imports.

Obviously, the economics need to be taken into account. Oftentimes, importing wheat is just much cheaper than growing a local crop. But from a sustainability perspective, it is imperative to work with local crops.

Bühler is supporting that with the Grain Processing Innovation Center in Kano, which is similar to the research and training centers you have seen when you visited us in Uzwil, where customers can come in, test recipes and grind different local grains.

This is our contribution to supporting the industry in Africa.

‘MILLERS ARE FEEDING THE PEOPLE OF THIS PLANET’

Finally, what message would you like to give to the global milling industry?

My message is clear: the milling business is our most important business. It is the business our company was built on, and it will remain our most important business in the future. We will not get tired of bringing innovations, technologies and services to support our customers in this industry going forward.

I also want to tell millers that they have one of the most noble professions in the world, because they produce a staple food that feeds billions of people. Millers help feed the world, and we are very proud to be a partner they could rely on in the past, can rely on today, and will be able to rely on in the future.