Bühler announced construction begins for its Energy & Manufacturing Technology Center in Uzwil, Switzerland, to house facilities for training and R&D. Construction of the building is expected to take around 18 months. With a length of about 125 meters and a width of 19 meters, the building will offer a total of 5,000 square meters of space for collaboration, training, and production. The Center is scheduled to open in the second quarter of 2023.

The Center will accommodate Bühler’s now globally established vocational training, the concept of lifelong learning for employees, and a health center. The ‘Energy’ in the new facility’s name stands for what Bühler considers “a critical resource and a basis for the health, performance and resilience of employees.”

With the Manufacturing Technology Center, Bühler is expanding its production in Switzerland in the field of prototyping and innovation on an area of about 2,000 square meters. In the new building, Bühler will house the so-called fast line which develops, tests, and manufactures new technologies, spare parts, and possibly also new services for customers in a fast-track process. Prototyping and testing of new manufacturing processes will also take place in the Manufacturing Technology Center. “With this, we are also committing ourselves to Switzerland as a production location in the future. Here, we will manufacture innovations for our customers as pilot projects, which we will later also introduce in other production plants worldwide,” said Andreas Schachtner, head of Business Development in Manufacturing, Logistics & Supply Chain.

The Energy Center will become the central hub for vocational training, lifelong learning, and preventive health care at Bühler. It is meant to complement the CUBIC Innovation Campus, which opened in 2019. The new four-story tower at the head of the building is dedicated to the topics of collaborative education and training on all levels. On the first floor of the building behind it, apprentice areas for plant engineers, polymechanics, automation engineers and IT apprentices are located on more than 1,300 square meters. This new center will also be accessible to external companies, is close to the recently renovated cafeteria and is directly connected to the CUBIC.

Christof Oswald, head of Human Resources at Bühler, elaborated in the announcement: “Health, education, and productivity are closely linked. With the Energy Center, Bühler is once again investing in its most valuable resource: the people of the company. In doing so, we are assuming social as well as corporate responsibility and securing our future. We are committed to the successful model of our vocational training and lifelong learning. Furthermore, we are expanding our healthcare expertise much more strongly and making a further contribution to keeping Uzwil attractive as a business location.”