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PARTNERSHIP WITH CUSTOMERS“Engineering Customer Success” – this is the level of performance that Bühler promises its customers. In four examples, we show how we honor this promise to help our customers change the world for the better.

PARTNERSHIP WITH CUSTOMERSBühler Annual Report 2017

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It’s 2014: Jesse Wang wipes a bead of sweat from his face and readjusts his breathing mask. He knows that now is not the time to make mistakes. He joined Bühler three years ago, in July. He didn’t know much about batteries when he started, and he never thought that he would become an expert working tirelessly to develop a new electrode slurry. A process that would be so unique that his customer, Yi Liu, would later say: “This solution from Bühler will completely change the battery industry. It is a historic moment, a revolution.”

LISHEN Tianjin, China

BREAKTHROUGH on the sixth attempt

YI LIU Lishen Manager of the Engineering Department


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Just after starting in this position, Wang received the order to expand the battery laboratory at the Bühler site in Wuxi. The talks with the first customer were so promising that Bühler quickly decided to make this preliminary investment.Wang was responsible for the battery industry in China, sup-ported by his colleagues at the Swiss headquarters who had originally developed the idea for the new process.

But now he is alone in the battery lab, already working on the sixth trial to make the electrode slurry. So far, the tests have not produced the sought-after results. Would he meet the high requirements his customer Lishen was looking for this time?

Batteries are the guiding factorBatteries keep our world turning. They are the small energy stores that drive our lives and make them easier. More and more cars are being entirely powered by batteries – partic-ularly in China. In 2017, around 800,000 electric cars were sold in the country; that’s nearly half the total global produc-tion. E-mobility is heavily supported and subsidized by the Chinese government. It is an effective measure against air pollution and crucial to China’s strategy of becoming a high-tech country. Financial support is expected to run out by the end of 2020 though. By that point at the latest, car batteries will have to be powerful enough to be able to survive in the free market. Reason enough for battery manufacturers such as Lishen to invest significantly in research and development of new processes to produce batteries.

Founded in 1997, Lishen today employs over 9,000 peo-ple. Its list of customers reads like a “who’s who” of the electronics and entertainment industry: Apple, Samsung, Dell, HP, Huawei, and Lenovo are just some of the illustrious names. The Chinese battery manufacturer has production plants in Beijing, Qingdao, Suzhou, Wuhan, Shenzhen, and Mianyang and is one of the top-five battery producers in China. Lishen is planning to increase yearly output from around 10 GWh currently to 40 GWh by 2021 – which is equivalent to an output of around 800,000 car batteries.

It’s all about the slurryWang applies the electrode slurry carefully onto a carrier film. It is black and slightly viscous in consistency. He is using a film applicator to apply the layer as thinly as possible on the film – this should be no thicker than 100 micrometers. Afterward, the dried electrode goes to Lishen and to his main contact, Liu, the engineer who is responsible on the customer side.

The cooperation with Lishen is extremely close. The two companies work well together: as the client, Lishen brings its expertise and knowledge of batteries to the table. In return, Bühler brings knowledge of processes and years of expe-rience in continuous mixing: a unique mixing process never used in the battery industry before until now.

The electrode slurry is essential for the power density and energy density of a battery, that is to say, for the output and energy per battery volume. Traditionally, slurries are produced in batches in large vessels. These conventional plants are huge and expensive. The process is also very inflexible: if a batch does not meet the requirements, it is either dis-posed of or used for inferior products. While the production

of large batches takes several hours, the production in the new process developed by Bühler takes only a few minutes. Using a rotating twin-shaft mixer, the necessary process steps – such as mixing, homogenizing, dispersing, and de-gassing – are combined in a single, continuously running unit.

Thanks to this continuous mixing process, the manufac-turer is able to intervene at any given moment should the results not meet the requirements. Ultimately, what counts is that the improved mixing process significantly increases battery performance. It also reduces the investment costs,

“This order has allowed us to send a clear signal to the industry: the new mixing process is ready for industrial use.” JESSE WANG Bühler Engineer

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and the energy costs are much lower using this new process in comparison to using conventional production methods. Lastly, the space requirements of the new process are con-siderably lower, and fewer rejects are produced. Something that has also impressed Lishen. Abandoning the classic batch processing of electrode slurry in favor of a new con-tinuous process benefits the customer. But will Bühler be successful in developing the industrial-scale process soon enough for Lishen’s new plant?

Each trial takes several months. First, the Bühler engi-neers develop and validate the optimum slurry composition based on Lishen specifications. Once the Bühler team is satisfied with the test results, they produce 50 liters using the new formula, which is then sent to Lishen. Liu, currently a leading engineer from the process department at Lishen, then takes over. The Lishen team uses the new electrode slurry to create battery prototypes and conducts extensive tests. Because this is no ordinary electrode slurry. Bühler has revolutionized the battery-making process.

Will the sixth attempt pay off?Wang is in the analysis laboratory. In addition to the many other parameters, for this sixth test he has further adjusted the concentration of the bonding agent. The test results are in. He checks the viscosity and the distribution of particles in the electrode slurry as well as the electrical conductivity of the electrode; together these determine the power density and energy density of the battery. The viscosity of the slurry was particularly problematic in the last series of tests. New raw materials and new parameter settings led to the slurry being too thick, so that it could not be optimally used. “Thick and viscous like toothpaste,” Wang recollects.

The latest values convince the engineer. The test results meet Liu’s requirements. But it will be several months before Lishen confirms the results. It’s a long wait before Wang knows whether the client will want to perform more trials. But time is of the essence, because Lishen’s competitors are also working on innovations, and the Bühler process is the first in a series of steps in the complicated process of

The viscosity of the electrode slurry took six years to perfect.


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The rotating twin-shaft mixer is the heart of Bühler’s continuous process to produce electrode slurry.

developing batteries. Should the Bühler engineers miss their goal, it endangers the whole manufacturing process and the new plants Lishen is planning in Suzhou.

The production of batteries takes place in several phases. It begins with preparing the various raw materials that the battery manufacturers usually buy from chemical companies. These are then processed into anode and cathode slurries in a mixing process.

This is where Bühler’s innovative continuous mixing pro-cess comes in; however, Bühler solutions are also used in the upstream process to ensure correct dosing of raw materi-als. After the mixing process, the slurries are applied to films. These are then cut to size and rolled up into battery cells. In the next step, the manufacturers charge and discharge the cells to ensure the best possible battery performance. Final-ly, the cells are packaged in battery packs, which are then used in cars. A single electric car battery consists of several hundred to several thousand battery cells.

Everything hinges on this one callMonths later, Wang’s mobile phone rings. He takes the call. Liu is on the other end of the line. The Lishen project manager, who is usually rather restrained, is delighted: the results of the sixth trial are impressive. The viscosity problem has been solved, and the power density and energy density of the batteries have significantly increased during the test series.

Wang can hardly believe it. He only trusts the results after conducting the tests again. But in fact, Wang and his team have done it. The electrode slurry was indeed of the required quality. Things now start picking up pace, and Lishen signs a contract for the delivery of a pilot plant to their factory in Tian-jin. It is August 2014, three years after Wang started working

for Bühler. The successful trials that eventually led to ordering the first pilot plant were the beginning of a mutual success story for Lishen and Bühler. Both partners agreed the deliv-ery of 10 production lines on an industrial scale. Four will be opened in the new Suzhou factory, two in Tianjin, where the pilot plant is located, and four more at the Qingdao location.

Altogether, the lines have a yearly output of up to 10 GW/h. Enough to produce more than 200,000 car batteries per year.

“This order allowed us to send a clear signal to the in-dustry: the new mixing process is ready for industrial use; the benefits can be seen directly in an industrial context. So it did not take long for additional orders to roll in. Another customer has already ordered four production lines, and we are in talks with further customers,” Wang explains.

“This solution from Bühler will completely change the battery industry. It is a historic moment, a revolution.” YI LIU Lishen Engineer

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Bühler engineer Jesse Wang was instrumental in revolutionizing the battery-making process.

A milestone for the battery industryWang ties his tie. It is July 20, 2017. Today is a historic moment, the grand opening of the Lishen plant in Suzhou in front of hundreds of spectators. He has already visited the plant and knows just how impressive it is: stretching over 600 by 50 meters, the plant contains all the processing steps for car batteries, from the raw materials and the electrode slurry right up to the finished electric car battery. Everyone from the battery industry will get together tonight. Represen-tatives of the local and regional government will show up. A great success after six years of work in the lab.

It has grown dark in Suzhou. The audience listens with bated breath to the statements made by Qin Xingcai, the President of Lishen. The company plans to be at the fore-front of the Chinese battery market with the new plant. “This

new factory of ours is producing a new generation of bat-teries. This 30% increase in energy density means we have achieved a quantum leap,” Liu and Wang nod to each other with appreciation. Lishen Suzhou honors Bühler with the Best Equipment Supplier award.

“Six years of joint research and development have paid off. Six years of strong cooperation between Lishen and Bühler colleagues in China and Switzerland. This award and 10 production lines at Lishen are visible proof of this,” Wang says with pride. And Liu adds: “Bühler kept the promise they made. Bühler is our long-term partner; we tackle new pro-jects together.” Since then, Liu has been appointed Manager of the Engineering Department at Lishen. Not least because of the successful project with Bühler, and a milestone for the battery industry.


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CITY GROUP AND AKIJ Dhaka, Bangladesh

FOODS FOR a brighter future

Poverty, malnutrition, infectious diseases. The common perception so many people have of Bangladesh has been out of date for some time. The country has been experiencing an economic upturn for well over two decades, which is also evident in the indigenous food industry. More food, better, safer, and at lower prices is the motto. Together with the producers City Group and Akij, Bühler is undoubtedly involved in the positive development of food security for the country.


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“Our products are for human consumption, and food safety is indeed the most important thing to take into consideration when designing a product.” SHEIKH BASHIR UDDIN Owner and Managing Director of Akij Flour Mills Ltd.

Sheikh Bashir Uddin, owner of Akij Flour Mills Ltd., employs 50,000 people.

Akij Group is a conglomerate that grew out of the jute trading business. Founded by Sheikh Akij Uddin in the latter part of the 1940s, the company now operates in the textile, cement, ceram-ics, packaging, plastic, and steel industries, and is the country’s largest tobacco producer. In the food sector, Akij produces mineral water, milk, soft drinks, snacks, wheat flour, and bakery products. With Bühler, Akij set up a flour mill close to Dha-ka. The Akij Group includes 26 companies and has more than 50,000 employees. The destiny of the company is now in the hands of the founder’s son, Sheikh Bashir Uddin.

AKIJ GROUP

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Zahid Abu, Senior Engineer Bühler Dhaka and Galibur Rahman, Head Miller Akij Flour Mills Ltd. inspect the newly-built production site.

Dry mops and dust cloths are in constant use. Bharati is one of dozens of cleaning women who ensure a pristine production environment in the Akij flour mill. She wears colorful attire, the salwar kameez, consisting of green trou-sers, a matching long top, and a head scarf. The colors glow in the glossy white, immaculate mill. No dust particles are found here. And this in Bangladesh, where, especially in the late monsoon season, the dust from the road sticks to clothing moist from the heat.

Cleanliness is the watchword in industrial food pro-duction, says Sheikh Bashir Uddin, owner and Managing Director of Akij Flour Mills Ltd.: “I don’t even know who could say food safety is not important. Our products are for human consumption, and food safety is indeed the most import-ant thing to take into consideration when designing a prod-uct.” Akij’s business is booming. In 70 years, the company

has grown from a small jute-trading operation to one of the biggest corporate conglomerates in Bangladesh. Akij has also engaged in food and drink production for more than 10 years. Cooperation with Bühler began in 2014, when Bashir decided to build a mill. Since then, two production lines have been developed for traditional flour, with daily ca-pacities of 500 and 550 metric tons, respectively, as well as an Atta mill with a capacity of 150 metric tons per day.

The project also includes a flour storage system with a capacity of 3,200 metric tons. “Akij has invested in our latest equipment and technology, and therefore has the most state-of-the-art mill in the whole of South Asia,” says Marcel Züst, Senior Advisor at Bühler for the region.

Industrial food production in Bangladesh has become more important in recent years. After all, production is the country’s greatest hope. It is thanks to industry that


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City Group’s Shampa Rahman and her father, Fazlur Rahman, have counted on the partnership with Bühler for over 20 years.

“The government has set itself the goal of making Bangladesh a middle-income country by 2020. In order to achieve this, the private sector must invest in production – we need more rice, flour, and cooking oil.” FAZLUR RAHMAN Founder and Chairman of City Group

The City Group conglomerate has been in food production since the 1970s. Once Fazlur Rahman’s first mustard mill project was successful, the founder began to diversify. Other lines of business, such as packaging, energy, and steel, were added. The cooperation with Bühler began in 1997, with the con-struction of the first mill. Rahman soon expanded his business to include more mills, two pelleting plants for poultry feed, and a production plant for fish feed. Bühler also supplied machines for crush-ing soybeans, which are integrated into the pro-cess of the soybean oil extraction plant supplied by Andreotti. City Group now has 26 companies, which together employ over 10,000 people. Rahman is still the head of the company as Chairman and has named his daughter Shampa as his successor.

CITY GROUP

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explains Sheikh Bashir Uddin. “From our side, we can drive the development of new, nutritional products; of course, we also need people to buy them. Thanks to the size of our industrial operations, our products are available for a reasonable price, which enables more consumers to have access to more foods.”

Also convinced of this is Fazlur Rahman, Chairman of City Group, the biggest Bühler customer in the country. “Bangladesh is growing,” says Rahman. “We want to help establish a sound basis for the country’s economy. The gov-ernment has set the goal of making Bangladesh a middle- income country by 2020. In order to achieve this, the private sector must invest in production – we need more rice, flour, and cooking oil.”

Rahman’s conglomerate is active in the domestic food industry. Having originally processed mustard seeds to make oil, Rahman developed the business over a period of 50 years to become a highly diversified company. In the food and feed sector, City Group now not only produces mustard, sunflower, and soybean oil, but also flour, lentils, and rice. Today, Fazlur’s daughter, Shampa Rahman, is No. 2 at City Group, and will take over the business in the future.

Bangladesh has been able to cross the poverty thresh-old as defined by the Human Development Index of the United Nations. This slow but steady economic growth has meant the country is now classified as one with me- dium development. The average life expectancy is 72, and the average school education lasts 10.2 years. Average per capita annual income is USD 1,600.

The food sector is supporting the upturnNevertheless, the way out of poverty is difficult. With approx-imately 165 million inhabitants, Bangladesh has one of the highest population densities in the world. Streets and hous-es are already overflowing in the capital city of Dhaka; the settlement stretches across huge areas with slums and sub-urbs. Mountains of garbage are piling up outside the city center. Flooding is a routine occurrence.

A silver lining can be seen, though. GDP has been growing steadily since 1995; in 2016, it grew by 7.1%, and in the three years before that, the annual rate was approximately 6%. The textile and metal industries are the most notable drivers of this development, but the domestic food processing indus-tries are keeping pace. “The livelihood of the population will increase first and foremost with the growth in the economy,”

Local markets offer a bigger variety of foodstuffs thanks to increased industrial production.


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The company’s newly commissioned production plant on the bank of the Shitalakshya River, 30 kilometers outside Dhaka, was brought about together with Bühler.

Industrial production means safe productionThe new production plant’s capacities exceed the di-mensions of those hitherto seen and are among the biggest projects that Bühler has ever carried out: during peak times, up to 50 metric tons of finished products leave the new production lines every hour. The production location includes a transshipment center for wheat with an intake capacity of 600 metric tons per hour as well as a facility for processing red lentils (600 metric tons per day), rice (72 metric tons per hour), and Atta flour (4 x 150 metric tons per day). In addition, a soybean warm dehulling plant with a throughput rate of 5,000 metric tons per day is currently under construction.

The food situation in the country is still not where it should be. With an unbalanced rice diet, malnutrition is still an issue, as are food-borne bacterial infections. And this is precisely why City Group is going for diversification with protein-rich lentils and vitamin-rich Atta flour. Safe food production is also a priority. Cleanliness is the top priority at the City Group production plant; gloves and caps are just as much a part of cleaning staff attire as the salwar kameez.

With Bühler, the company has a partner that has been employing the highest standards of hygiene for years. Bühler has been working with City Group to raise domestic food production to the highest level since 1997. The pro-duction site recently established outside Dhaka proves that this is possible.

Partnerships built on trustCity Group’s positive experience in previous projects with Bühler is the reason their family again awarded the big contract to Bühler, says Shampa Rahman: “I have known the people at Bühler since my childhood – some of them are just like family to me.”

She and her father value the quality of work at Bühler above all else: “And when problems arise, we can ask the people at Bühler to solve them – and they always do!”

Customer care is right at the top of the priority list for Bühler in Bangladesh. In the past two years, Marcel Züst made an average of one trip a month to Dhaka to monitor the progress of both major projects. “Being able to inau-gurate the new Bühler Dhaka Service Station in the early summer of 2017 was helpful,” says Züst. “This means that a highly competent team will be available on-site to help with technical problems or inspections in the future.”

The fruits of the joint endeavors are offered on the local market; alongside the traditional huge supply of rice from jute sacks, there are more and more prepackaged foods, lentils, flour, and cooking oil. City Group’s Teer brand is as common at every stand as Akij’s Sunshine flour. Thanks to the industrial processing by Bühler machines, these products comply with the highest standards in the sphere of food safety, and are available at prices that many people now can already afford.

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A bird’s-eye view of City Group in Dhaka. Here, they produce rice, dal, and wheat flour, and trade raw materials.


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A toddler dances. She wears one shoe, holding the other as she happily sways to imaginary music. Her mother glances at the 1.5-year-old now and again, but her attention – along with that of the other mothers gathered in a little room at the Centre de Santé health facility in the Rulindo district of Rwanda – is on the nurse explaining the importance of proper nourish-ment for their babies and themselves while pregnant or nursing. The mothers and children in this room are recipients of the fortified por-ridge made by Africa Improved Foods (AIF) and distributed by the Government of Rwanda to scale up nutrition efforts and combat stunting in the country.

AFRICA IMPROVED FOODS Kigali, Rwanda

PROJECT LIFE Fighting malnutrition


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“The world needs smallholder farmers. AIF can do its part by making rural livelihoods more sustainable.” AMAR ALI CEO of Africa Improved Foods

Amar Ali, CEO of AIF, in the company warehouse. AIF produces 16 million metric tons of relief food for the World Food Programme each year.

The mothers have brought their babies to be weighed and measured to assess their development progress. When they come for a check-up, they take part in a lesson and then get more of the fortified cereal, which they have also learned to prepare in similar classes. The mothers receive the AIF-made fortified cereal for free as part of the Rwandan Ministry of Health’s Thousand Days program to address the effects of malnutrition, particularly in the critical first 1,000 days of development from conception to age two.

Finding lasting solutionsThe young women keenly listen as a nurse describes how to prevent malnutrition in their babies and themselves. Nourish your own body properly during pregnancy, breastfeed for at least two years, and when your infant is six months old, be-gin to supplement with the fortified porridge provided by the government. The majority of the women here are among the poorest 20% in the country and lack education, making them especially vulnerable to malnutrition. Added to that is food in-

security, a significant threat in Rwanda. The government has partnered with AIF to find a lasting solution to both issues.

Despite ongoing efforts, nearly 37% of children under five in Rwanda are affected by stunting, according to the government’s 2015 Comprehensive Food Security and Vul-nerability Analysis report. Stunting is one consequence of under nutrition, and simply put, it means a child’s height is

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AIF produces its commercial Nootri range cereals for mothers and infants.

significantly less than the average for their age. However, the complexities of stunting extend far beyond impaired growth to include poor cognitive and organ development, weakened immune systems, and nutrition-related chronic diseases in adulthood. Though the numbers have improved from 43% in 2012 when the last study was made, there is still much to be done, primarily in rural areas, such as Rulindo, where the average is still 40% compared to 27% in urban areas.

Taking action in the first 1,000 daysWhile the statistics are daunting, stunting can be prevented if the right steps are taken in those first 1,000 days. “We’ve placed 46 children in the government program at the Centre de Santé. All of them have stunting problems where their height did not match their age,” says Jacqueline Urures, head of the health center and a nurse for 15 years. “It will take some time to accurately evaluate, but we can already say that three of them are now in the correct height-age range. We also see that well-nourished children have more energy.”

AIF’s mission is curbing malnutrition not only in Rwanda but across sub-Saharan Africa, which has been heavily impacted by famine in recent years. The famine is fueled by the worst El Niño event on record. While achieving its mission, AIF is also working to develop a truly sustainable food value chain in Rwanda that it hopes to extend to other countries, including Uganda, eastern Congo, Kenya, Tanza-nia, and Ethiopia, in the next five years. “We are happy to be providing relief foods and foods to address malnutrition, but more needs to be done. Our premise is to support African countries so they reach a level where they no longer need international support and can be economically self-sustain-ing using local capacities,” explains AIF CEO, Amar Ali.

AIF directly employs 300 people – among them mill oper- ators, who required training to learn how to effectively and safely operate the high-end Bühler-built factory, located in the Kigali Special Economic Zone. The factory has a produc-tion capacity of 45,000 metric tons annually. “The need in Africa for the products we produce is extremely high consider-


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Bühler Key Account Manager, Theodor Sutter, and AIF Chief Operating Officer, Jan Vriens, worked together to make the AIF factory a reality.

ing the famine in East Africa,” Ali says. “We can’t afford down-time. We chose Bühler because we wanted a reputable company that knows how to build in Africa and in challenging environments without compromising quality and that will be with us through all the challenges. There have been many challenges, and Bühler has been there as a partner through-out. One of the challenges was finding people to operate the mill. Bühler did that as well, training our people on their equipment in Nairobi.”

AIF officially inaugurated its CHF 60 million plant in May 2017, but already in late 2016 had begun manufacturing fortified cereals for its biggest customers – the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Government of Rwanda. From the start of production to the end of 2017, the company had produced 4 million kilograms of fortified cereal for the Rwandan government, and 17 million bags – 26 million kilos – of relief foods for the WFP.

The WFP and the Government of Rwanda are not only customers. They are also members of the AIF public-private joint venture, along with Royal DSM (the project initiator), the International Finance Corporation, Dutch development bank FMO, and the UK-based CDC Group. “We could not achieve our mission without the support of the Rwandan government, which is a shareholder, customer, and partner in all

Bühler’s involvement in what would become AIF be-gan in 2009, when Peter Boehni, Head of the Bühler Innovation Satellite at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, heard about a DSM project that would address malnutrition in Africa with a facto-ry in Africa. “I knew this was the perfect project for us because we share DSM’s goals of wanting to create a more sustainable food industry to feed the grow-ing global population and address malnutrition,” says Boehni. The project was aptly named “Life.” Though technical discussions with the Bühler team, DSM, and consortium initiator CHAI (Clinton Health Access Ini-tiative) began in 2013, Project Life only really began to take form in 2015 when the AIF consortium was established and the decision was made to build a plant in Kigali, Rwanda. “Things happened fast after we signed the contract in July 2015,” says Bühler’s Theodor Sutter, Key Account Manager for the project. By December 2016, the plant was fully productive.”

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Bühler Service Engineer Alex Ndachi is often on-site to train AIF technicians in the maintenance of machinery.

ways,” says Ali. “The WFP is our biggest customer. They enable us to build scale and make our products more affordable, and their stringent quality standards give us the opportunity to improve overall standards of production in the country. Together, we sustainably catalyze the eco- system around us with this economic development model.”

In the region, for the region By sourcing the maize and soy for their porridges from nearly 10,000 local smallholder farmers, cutting out the intermedi-aries, and paying them at the point of pickup, the company is supporting the government’s plans to spur agricultural trans-formation. Agriculture currently contributes to about 33% of Rwanda’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to its National Institute of Statistics. It plans to increase this.

Today, about 70% of Rwandans make their living from agriculture. One of them is farmer Vestine Akmanizanye. On her own, the widow cannot handle the planting and harvesting of her 250-square-meter field in the northern province. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to. She’s a member of the AIF- supported Rulindo district Farmer’s Cooperative, which over-sees 160 hectares – 1.6 million square meters – of farmland run by 3,300 families. On a hazy, warm morning in Septem-ber 2017, almost 20 cooperative members have gathered to help Akmanizanye sow maize. “I could not manage it on my own,” she explains in Kinyarwanda, the country’s national language. Cooperative manager, Thacien Hakizimana, inter-prets her words into English. “People in the cooperative work together. We work in harmony to help one another,” she says.

Each family tends between 100 and 1,500 square meters of land. The majority of them lack access to modern meth-ods of harvesting, processing, and storage. This is where AIF comes in. The consortium collects the maize shortly after harvest and transports it directly to its facilities, where the moisture content is maintained to acceptable levels. “With AIF picking up maize harvests immediately, we have seen a significant reduction of post-harvest loss due to afla-toxin,” says Yassin Iyamuremye, Director General of Corpo-rate Services for the country’s Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources.

The farmers in the AIF-supported cooperatives are paid at the moment of pickup, an unusual but effective practice. Raising the income of local farmers by sourcing crops from them, as AIF does, improves their livelihoods and creates financial inclusion. “I’m grateful to be in the cooperative and have access to good seeds and fertilizer. Without the mid-dlemen, I get a good price for my crop,” says Akmanizanye.

Keeping up with growing demandJust three years ago the government was struggling to find a market for the maize and soy crops produced by smallholder farmers, but it now faces a new issue, explains the Director General, as AIF is currently consuming about 30,000 metric tons of maize a year. “Our next issue is developing a strategy to ensure the raw materials continue to remain available to them. We need to put a system in place to mitigate drought impact and resilience against climate change, and irrigation systems are a big part of this.”


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Rulindo Cooperative Manager, Thacien Hakizimana, and Cooperative Chairman, Elia Habimana, say AIF has changed the lives of farmers.

“AIF’s partnerships with the cooperatives create financial inclusion. This is a big achievement.” YASSIN IYAMUREMYE Director General of Corporate Services for the Rwandan Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources

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Cooperatives play a vital role in drought preparedness, Iyamuremye says. “Well-managed cooperatives can make a difference, not only in the lives of individual farmers. They also help the government obtain its goal of increasing agri-cultural GDP. The cooperatives have a successful ‘teach my neighbor’ approach.”

Elia Habimana, Cooperative Chairman of the Rulindo district, applied for this voluntary position to help fellow farmers actively exchange knowledge. He is respected and viewed as a role model by his peers, explains Cooperative Manager Hakizimana. “It is a lot of work to be the Chairman, but I want to support my government with the sustainable development of farming,” Habimana says. “We farmers have learned from the challenge of drought, we are elevating the quality of our harvests, and we are improving our yields. We have benefited 100% from our partnership with AIF.”

The investment into the cooperatives has a greater pur-pose than meeting AIF’s production goals, the company’s CEO explains. “Worldwide, 80% of farmers are smallholders, and they produce over 80% of the food consumed in the developing world. They have an essential role to play in food security, and with this in mind, we are facing a big problem.

Young people today don’t want to take over the smallholder farms of their parents,” says Ali. “This has a lot to do with the fact that these farms just haven’t paid off in the past. We are trying to solve this because it is part of a bigger pic-ture. The population of Africa is projected to grow at about 100,000 people a day between now and 2050. They need food and jobs, and the world needs smallholder farmers to meet its nutrition needs. AIF can do its part by making rural livelihoods more sustainable.”

Vestine Akmanizanye is a member of the Rulindo district cooperative.

“I am grateful to be in the cooperative and have access to good seeds and fertilizer. Without the middlemen, I get a good price for my crop.” VESTINE AKMANIZANYE Smallholder farmer and cooperative member


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The best perspective in every situation: ZEISS is driving the functionality and quality of glasses to new heights with its innovations. With its coating unit, Bühler is part of this unique devel-opment. How will the success story continue?

ZEISS VISION CARE Aalen, Germany

A HINT OF HIGH TECH


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“The better we understand what’s going on in the brain, the better we can construct glasses.” MARKUS HAIDL ZEISS Researcher

Bühler coating specialist Karl Matl and ZEISS researcher Markus Haidl work together to perfect the coating process.

Victoria Beckham swears by them, and the Spanish ath-lete Ruth Beitia wore them in Rio 2016 for her Olympic high jump victory: glasses with lenses from ZEISS. If there is one global brand of optics that guarantees the best perspective, it has to be the German manufacturer ZEISS. As Rolex is to watches, Rolls Royce to cars, Apple to phones, and Chanel to perfumes, ZEISS is to lenses.

And with good reason. The company’s history is filled with groundbreaking innovations to this day: as early as the 19th century, ZEISS developed the first physical models for the optical calculation of microscopes. In 1912, the compa-ny invented the Punktal spectacle lens, which was the first modern precision spectacle lens ever. The anti-glare coating followed in 1959. In 1986, ZEISS made progressive lenses

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with horizontal symmetry easy to wear for the first time. ZEISS has been digitizing optics since 1992, starting with a video-based system for making individual measurements to ensure the lenses fit perfectly. In 2013, ZEISS launched DuraVision Platinum, the most scratch-resistant glass on the market so far. ZEISS also revolutionized customer-specific lens production, so that lenses now need only be processed on the one side – many eyewear manufacturers through- out the world have acquired a license for this technology. Every year, ZEISS invests 10% of its revenue in research and development – which is reflected in the pace of innovation in lenses and optical instruments.

ZEISS plays a huge roll in the successful track record of glasses. Every year, it sells 100 million spectacle lenses in more than 60 countries around the world. There are special designs and coatings for car drivers, people who work with computers and athletes – custom-made lenses optimized

for the eyes, face, frame, and lifestyle all bear the ZEISS hallmark. Glasses have since evolved from being a medically prescribed visual aid to becoming an industrial mass-pro-duced fashion staple, an everyday object that sits on your nose and does far more than simply correct vision.

Of course, this makes it easy to forget how important it is to have good vision. “Seeing is believing,” ZEISS research-er Markus Haidl puts it in a nutshell. Education, quality of life, and comfort are unthinkable without clear vision. See-ing is considered to be the most important sense humans have – we take in 80% of all information through our eyes. If your vision is impaired, it is difficult to learn, your working life is drastically shorter, and your quality of life suffers. As in other areas of basic human needs, when it comes to vi-sion, there are still many people who do not have access to optical aids – an estimated 625 million people worldwide.

Customized mass productionThe high-tech nature of glasses is often overlooked. At first glance, a plastic lens just appears to be a transparent piece of plastic. But the ZEISS lenses pack a real punch, in three different ways:

Individual optics: With the ZEISS i.Profiler, the opti-cian can capture the eye’s defects with extreme precision at 1,500 measuring points per eye. A special algorithm – known as the Coca-Cola formula of spectacle lens manufacturers – calculates the best possible correction for your vision. Using

this as a basis together with your personal visual require-ments, it feeds the relevant production parameters for the lens into the processing machine at one of the production sites in America, Europe, or Asia. The result is a truly tailor- made, personalized lens, as unique as a fingerprint. The effect is impressive: “The vision performance in low light conditions and at night is significantly improved. As a result, motorists are safer on the road. Colors appear much more intense – all visual impressions appear sharper and with more contrast,” explains ZEISS researcher Haidl.

Production and logistics: ZEISS manufactures up to 15,000 of this type of custom product every day alone in its prescription production facility in Aalen, Germany, and the shaping process is carried out individually for each lens, rather than in batches. Production and logistics run as smoothly as the internal workings of a Swiss watch. Starting from a blank, the glass is shaped completely automatically in around 90 seconds by a five-axis CNC (Computer Numer-ical Control) processing machine and optically adjusted for its future wearer. The production process from calculating the individual lens to shaping, polishing, tinting, and coating includes more than 30 individual stages in total.

Functionality: “This is where the magic happens, be-cause this is where we differ so much from other manufac-turers,” explains Haidl. Basic functions such as anti-glare or scratch resistance have long been part of the standard repertoire of glass manufacturers; but now there is a trend toward glasses that are developed for the highest level of comfort and safety in every conceivable situation.

For motorists, for example: The ZEISS developers have created special spectacle lenses that filter out part of the high-energy blue light of modern LED headlights. This part of the light makes the modern lights very bright – good for the driver – but it is irritating for others, for example, for drivers in oncoming traffic. The reduction provided by the ZEISS DriveSafe coating reduces the glare, making it more pleasant to drive at night or in poor visibility conditions. For screen use, for example: the high-resolution retina screens on tablets and smartphones send light waves that signal to our brains that it is day. This affects the distribution of the sleep hormone melatonin. ZEISS lenses can also mitigate the effects of these particular wavelengths. Contact lenses, for example: With EnergizeMe, ZEISS has developed lenses specifically for contact lens wearers. Contact lens wearers also wear glasses for several hours a day to rest their eyes. Given the intensive use of digital devices – which emit a high proportion of blue light – and the particular viewing habits of contact lens wearers, ZEISS offers this target group a product that is optimized for their special vision requirements and digital lifestyle.

Coatings are crucial This brings us to the subject of coatings: “We use coatings to give the lenses their special functions,” Haidl explains. This means that the coating is a crucial process stage in produc-ing the lenses – and also one of Bühler’s areas of application.

After an immersion bath for a scratch-resistant coating, the polished spectacle lenses are put in a vacuum chamber,

“We need to ensure that the results we achieve with proto-types can be reliably repro-duced in mass production.” KARL MATLBühler Coating Specialist


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Markus Haidl is convinced: the glasses success story is not yet over.

where the layers for the other functions are vapor-deposited. Up to nine individual layers made from six different materials are applied in individual steps. Metal oxides are evaporated in a high vacuum and deposited on the surface of the lens, which is ionized and therefore attracts the oxide molecules with the opposite charge. To also achieve extremely hard and resilient layers, the coating packages are then addition-ally compressed using ionizing radiation. By the end of the process, all the layers together are only 400 nanometers thick. This is a hint of hightech: this is the distance that grass grows in 15 seconds.

“Compared to these dimensions, in which we have to produce things precisely and reliably, everything else is fairly trivial,” says Bühler coating specialist Karl Matl. In case of a potential error, the automated production means that the production process for an individual lens must be started again from scratch. The delivery of the affected customer orders would be delayed by having to produce the lens again, especially if things did not quite go to plan in the coating stage at the end of the process. With several thousand or-ders a day in Aalen, error-free production is a real challenge.

With the SYRUS coating systems, Bühler Leybold Optics has more or less mastered the art of coating to perfection. It’s essential that the high-performance unit does not fail: it must reliably deliver the coating results 24 hours a day, and this is what makes the quality of the ZEISS lenses so unique. The blue reflex color of the ZEISS glasses requires coating thickness accuracy down to the nanometer – these are just a few atom layers on top of each other.

For over 10 years, ZEISS has been so satisfied that Bühler is one of their preferred suppliers and the SYRUS system is

“Together, we are working towards being able to control and adapt the coating process more effectively.” MARKUS HAIDL ZEISS Researcher

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The blue reflex color of the ZEISS lenses is a unique characteristic made with Bühler coating technology.

used in all of the spectacle lens manufacturer’s production sites. “For us, Bühler is not just a supplier, but really a part-ner,” Haidl explains. After all, it is not just the technologies and machines, but ultimately the people who ensure that the research and development work actually ends up on the lens in an efficient industrial process. “And for this, we consider Bühler a reliable partner that shows a great deal of initiative,” says Haidl.

Trust on both sides also plays a crucial role here. “We need to ensure that the results we achieve with prototypes can be reliably reproduced in mass production,” says Matl. This requires close coordination between ZEISS and Bühler, especially in particular situations. For the transfer of a newly developed, functional coating such as ZEISS DriveSafe, it is also necessary to develop new technologies and coating standards – parts of the innovation process that must be mastered together.

After more than 170 years of ZEISS and over 100 years of precision lenses, one might ask: Is the glasses success story slowly coming to an end? Have developments of the transparent piece of plastic been exhausted?

This question makes ZEISS researcher Haidl and Bühler expert Matl smile. It all comes down to the fact that vision itself is not fully understood. Current brain research allows us

to gain deeper and deeper insights into how we humans form a subjective and emotional picture based on a physically ob-jective input of light waves. “The better we understand what’s going on in the brain, the better we can construct glasses,” explains ZEISS researcher Haidl. At the ZEISS Vision Science Lab in Tübingen, researchers are working on these funda-mental questions in close interdisciplinary cooperation with universities and nonuniversity research institutions.

There is also still potential for further optimization in pro-duction. “Together, we are working toward being able to con-trol and adapt the coating process more effectively,” says Haidl. If that works, it would be possible to work more pre-cisely and eliminate the source of errors more easily. Bühler is currently developing an even more accurate measurement of the nanometer-thin layers in order to achieve greater ac-curacy for the layer thickness cut-off.

And also in terms of functionality, more riddles need to be deciphered; preventing lenses from fogging up is right at the very top of the list. If antifog glasses were to be launched on the market, it would not just be appreciated by winter sports athletes and chefs. All the renowned eyewear manufacturers are working on it – and it would not be a coincidence if ZEISS, with the close cooperation of Bühler, were to solve the problem and impress eyeglass wearers once again.


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