Valley partner Bühler is making strides in bridging industrial challenges with innovation through Scale-Up Day, held during the company’s Networking Days. On June 25 in Uzwil, the Scale-Up Day brought together 21 carefully selected, high-impact scale-ups – mature start-ups with proven technologies – to connect directly with Bühler’s global customers, partners, and investors.

With companies focused on food system transformation, climate mitigation, and sustainable materials, Scale-Up Day created a platform for building partnerships and multiplying real-world solutions. 

“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.”

The aim of Scale-Up Day was to help solve real problems facing Bühler’s customers. By carefully selecting companies that address defined industry challenges in food, sustainability, and climate solutions, the event created opportunities for synergies, partnerships, and concrete action. Whether that’s joint go-to-market, deployment with customers or access to financing, this global network offers huge potential for multiplication – enabling scale-ups to grow their businesses while multiplying the impact of their solutions.

Each scale-up had access to the decision-makers attending Networking Days, encouraging in-depth conversations and potential collaborations. “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 scale-ups had a unique opportunity to connect with potential multiplication partners – those who can help grow their businesses while scaling the impact of their solutions.”

Transforming the world

Mature start-ups selected for this year’s Scale-Up Day offer proven technologies – not just early-stage ideas. Many are already operational, funded, and scaling, with strong teams, validated solutions, and a clear industrial fit. Over a rigorous six- to eight-week selection process, Bühler collaborated with leading venture capital firms and partners – including Big Idea Ventures, SOSV, the Swiss Entrepreneur Fund, Synthesis Capital, ICOS Capital, and the MassChallenge Switzerland start-up accelerator – to identify candidates with traction, relevance, and the capacity to grow.

“We look for big ideas which, if we can make them a reality, will completely transform the world,” said Andrew Ive, Founder 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 selection process resulted in a curated group of companies delivering tangible solutions across three innovation fronts: food systems transition, including novel ingredients, fermentation, alternative proteins, and food processing; climate change mitigation, encompassing industrial decarbonization, energy systems, and circularity; and sustainable materials, focused on biomanufactured and low-impact materials ready to scale.

Multiplying impact together

The Scale-Up Day took place as part of Bühler’s Networking Days 2025, a global industry platform that convened over 1,200 decision-makers at the company’s headquarters in Uzwil. 

Held every three years, the event brings together stakeholders from the food, feed, and sustainable mobility and materials sectors. With the 2025 theme “Multiplying impact together,” the event’s focus was on the solutions available today that build successful businesses and create positive impact at scale. Within this context, the scale-ups were provided with a unique opportunity to present their solutions to an audience of leading players in relevant industries. 

Farmtory, for example, has built a flexible, low-cost biomanufacturing system to produce peptides. The company, from Suzhou, China, has already commercialized a peptide-based sweetener based upon brazzein, a sweet-tasting protein that occurs naturally in oubli, a fruit from Central Africa, as well as a range of peptides that increase taste sensitivity to salt, allowing food producers to reduce the salt content of their recipes. 

“We are here to talk to anyone who might benefit from our peptide production capabilities,” said James Wu, CEO and Co-Founder of the company. “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 reports it recognizes that the challenges industry faces are too big to be tackled by any one company. The Scale-Up Day is part of its ongoing commitment to develop and nurture a global innovation ecosystem of start-ups, accelerators, incubators, and investment funds.

“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.”

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Want an example of successful collaboration between Valley Partners? Look no further than Luya and the ZFV Group. Find out why the ZFV Group selected Luya as an ingredient for their vegan dishes, how the partnership is progressing, and what makes this foodtech start-up so special in terms of innovation. 

A different kind of vegan alternative

Let’s start with two questions. Do vegan alternatives always have a long list of ingredients? And why are they still called "nuggets" or similar, as if they’re meat? These are two questions that Valley food service partner ZFV can answer easily thanks to Luya. 

In answer to the first question: No, they don’t. There are just six ingredients on Luya’s product list – 98% of its contents are chickpeas and okara. And additives? Zero.The foodtech start-up’s motto is back to nature and natural ingredients, a return to traditional production methods. It’s this that so impressed ZFV’s kitchen teams and why Luya regularly features on vegan menus across their 200 locations. But what exactly makes Luya so special?

Okara – a valuable by-product

Cutting-edge fermentation cabinets are busy whirring away at Luya’s production facility, located in a former chocolate factory. This traditional production method, familiar to many from their mother or grandmother’s kitchen, is being brought into the modern age. To further develop this method, Luya has invested heavily in research and technology. It’s not just about using natural ingredients and traditional techniques, but also about fighting food waste. Luya uses okara, a by-product of tofu production. Rich in nutrients and valuable components, okara is usually processed into biogas – quite literally burned. At Luya, it now enjoys a second life as a star ingredient. And this is just the beginning – many similar by-products still suffer the same fate. Co-founder Nina Schaller says the Luya team already has several new ideas in the pipeline. We’re very curious to see what else might end up on our plates in the future. Which raises the question…

Why are vegan products still called "stroganoff", "nuggets", and the like? 

Natural, vegan, and free from additives – Luya products bring variety to plant-based cuisine. But why do they still carry names like “burger”, “stroganoff” or “nuggets”? The answer is a simple one: we buy, cook, and eat what we know. When someone reads “stroganoff” – even if it’s made from okara and chickpeas instead of meat – they already have an idea of how to prepare it and what might go well with it. Luya’s goal is to inspire as many people as possible to try healthy, plant-based products. That’s easier to achieve if people feel confident enough to give it a go. So the naming can be seen as a kind of “user manual”.

Nina Schaller, Luya co-founder, explains: "We deliberately sought out natural, nutrient-rich products and analysed by-product streams. We didn’t shy away from research or the development of technical solutions and processes. One thing became clear: the system needs to change so that by-products don’t just end up in the bin for the sake of convenience. There’s still a lot of potential, and we’ll keep working on it."

Luya x ZFV – two Valley Partners join forces

Reto Zuberbühler, F&B developer in product management at ZFV, has been busy creating dishes with Luya – for example, the "Luya Korma" with a side of tomato-coconut chutney. The spicy South Asian curry was part of the Veganuary 2025 menu. The ZFV team had their eye on Luya for some time and were all the more excited to finally get it into the pan and onto the plate. With Reto a big fan of fermentation and natural ingredients, he was just as impressed by the ingredients list as he was by the taste.

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Valley partner Planted has opened a new state of the art facility for producing its plant-based whole-muscle meat in Memmingen, southern Germany. The Swiss FoodTech pioneer is already regarded as a trailblazer in the field of clean meat and the new premises mark a major milestone in the expansion of its production capabilities. 

A home for Planted' s whole-muscle platform

The focus of the new production facility in Memmingen will be on scaling and further developing the group of products that relies on Planted’s proprietary complete meat muscle. The muscle grows through proprietary fermentation processes and can be further processed into a variety of meat cuts. The planted.steak based on this advanced technology was launched in 2024 and has triggered strong demand from consumers and restaurants - demonstrating the potential of alternative proteins in terms of flavour, health benefits and sustainability. The opening in Memmingen was announced in late 2024 as an answer to this increased demand. 

Doubled production capacity 

The new plant in Memmingen marks itself out as Europe's most modern production facility for biostructured proteins and will make it possible to produce over 20 tonnes per day in the mid-term, the same amount as the current capacity of the site in Kemptthal, Switzerland - therefore doubling the company’s overall capacity. 

The facility will produce products for sale in Germany as well as other European markets, including the UK - creating over 50 new jobs in the medium term. Lukas Böni, co-founder and member of the management board of Planted, told us: ‘With an export share of 75% and Germany as our biggest export country, expansion into our largest EU market was an obvious choice. The new proximity to key target markets, combined with a state-of-the-art production facility, allows for more sustainable and efficient logistics and production, helping Planted meet growing demand and stay closer to our international customers. The Kemptthal site remains a central pillar of our production for the Swiss market.’

Sustainability as a central element

Sustainability is a guiding principle at the new production facility, as you would expect from the B-Corp certified company. Together with the local Alois Muller Group, an expert in sustainable energy concepts, the plant has been designed to be environmentally friendly and energy-efficient, so that it can work towards CO2 neutrality. Planted relies on groundwater cooling and the heat supply is provided by a sustainable energy system. The production of a planted.steak causes 97% less CO2 emissions and requires 81% less water compared to conventional beef. 

In a further achievement for the planted.steak, further significant national retail listings have been made at REWE and Kaufland in Germany, Tesco in the UK, Carrefour in France, Albert Heijn in Holland and Migros in Switzerland in recent weeks. To coincide with the BBQ season, Planted has also newly expanded its range with a paprika flavour way produced using the same innovative fermentation technology. Further products in the steak group are also under development and set to launch later this year.

‘Our biotechnological expertise enables us to bring new innovative products to market faster and more efficiently - and even closer to our customers in the retail and gastronomy sectors,’ explains Judith Wemmer, co-founder of Planted and operational lead for both production sites. The company is convinced that alternative proteins will surpass animal meat in terms of flavour, sustainability, health, productivity and price in future as the demand for environmentally friendly food continues to grow.  

Never miss a Swiss food innovation morsel.

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