Engineering a cleaner everyday with GEA NEXUS

From toothpaste and shampoo to detergents and lotions, Home and Personal Care (HPC) products are part of daily life for billions of people. As demand grows and sustainability expectations rise, GEA's NEXUS approach helps HPC manufacturers rethink production: holistically, efficiently, and with the future in mind.

Every morning starts with a routine. Brushing teeth, washing hair, applying lotion: small, everyday actions repeated across the globe. Behind these familiar products lies a highly dynamic industry. Home and Personal Care (HPC) manufacturers operate in a world of fast-changing consumer preferences, stricter regulations, and increasing pressure to reduce environmental impact. Producing more (and more diverse) products while using fewer resources has become one of the sector’s defining challenges.

For GEA, this challenge goes to the heart of its purpose: engineering for a better world. In HPC, that purpose translates into helping customers deliver the products people rely on every day, while cutting energy use, water consumption, and emissions. It is exactly where GEA NEXUS comes in.

A sector in constant motion

Unlike more traditional process industries, HPC production rarely stands still. Product portfolios expand continuously: liquid soaps instead of bars, specialized toothpastes, two-phase shower gels, and formulations without microplastics or animal-based ingredients.

At the same time, HPC manufacturers are under growing scrutiny. Consumers expect transparency and sustainability. Governments introduce tighter rules on water use, ingredients, and emissions. Investors look closely at climate commitments and progress toward net-zero targets. In many regions, water scarcity or energy prices are no longer abstract risks, but daily operational concerns. All of this means that incremental improvements are no longer enough. The industry needs a broader way of thinking about production.

“What we see in HPC is a constant evolution of products and processes. Compared to sectors where the product has been essentially the same for decades, our customers are dealing with permanent change.”

Falko Fließbach

Global Sales & Application Design, Home and Personal Care at GEA

Looking at the whole, not the parts

This is where GEA’s NEXUS approach makes a difference. Rather than optimizing single pieces of equipment in isolation, we look at the entire production system: processes, utilities, energy, water, and heat recovery, as one connected whole.

“Traditionally, factories were designed step by step,” explains George Shepherd, Global Technical Sustainability Manager at GEA. “The process came first; utilities were added later, and sustainability was often an afterthought. With NEXUS, we turn that logic around. We ask from the very beginning: how can this plant work as an integrated system with the lowest possible environmental footprint?”

Sustainability moves to the top of the agenda

What has changed most in recent years is not the technology, but the mindset.

This shift shows up in concrete decisions. Customers increasingly assess the total cost of ownership instead of just the initial investment. Projects with strong carbon-reduction potential may be accepted with longer payback times. In some cases, sustainability performance even influences procurement decisions alongside price and delivery.

“Customers are no longer asking if they should reduce emissions, but how fast they can do it,” George Shepherd adds. “Many have committed publicly to science-based targets for 2030, 2035, or 2040. Now those dates are getting closer, and action has to start today.”

“Five years ago, sustainability was often a ‘nice to have’. Today, it is one of the main criteria customers use to evaluate projects.”

Jacek Ławecki

Senior Process Engineer at GEA

From pledges to practical impact

Turning ambition into reality requires more than individual upgrades. NEXUS provides a structured way to identify where the biggest gains lie, with heat pumps as a key enabler, supporting electrification of heat, waste heat recovery, optimized temperature levels, and smarter integration of water and energy flows.

In HPC applications, the impact can be substantial. “While HPC has its own specifics, the potential is clearly there,” says Jacek Ławecki. “Depending on the starting point, a NEXUS-based approach can reduce energy consumption and operating costs, while cutting CO₂ emissions. When combined with renewable electricity, production can even move toward carbon-neutral operation.”

Greenfield or brownfield: both matter

Starting with a blank sheet of paper makes holistic optimization easier, but most factories are not built from scratch. In reality, the majority of sustainability projects happen in existing plants.

With NEXUS, even gradual changes can make a difference: lowering process temperatures, integrating heat recovery, or introducing heat pumps step by step. Many customers start with one line or one site, prove the concept, and then scale it across their network.

“The majority of our work is brownfield. Customers want to improve what they already have. The good news is that this is where some of the biggest gains can be achieved, especially in older sites that were designed when energy and water efficiency were not priorities.”

George Shepherd

Global Technical Sustainability Manager at GEA

Learning across industries

One of GEA’s strengths is its broad industrial footprint. Experiences from food, beverage, or pharmaceutical projects feed directly into solutions for HPC. To make this exchange easier, GEA is bringing process and utility expertise even closer together within its organization.

“This cross-industry learning is incredibly valuable. Sustainability challenges are rarely unique to one sector. When we look at energy, water, and emissions in an integrated way, solutions developed in one industry can often be adapted to another. It is about making those connections visible and actionable.”

Dr. Isabel Osterroth

Team Lead of NEXUS at GEA

Partnering for a better world

For HPC manufacturers, the pressure to act will only increase. Consumers will continue to demand responsible products. Regulators will tighten standards. Investors will look for credible transition plans. In this environment, choosing the right partners matters.

“Our customers have made commitments to the market and to their shareholders,” Falko Fließbach says. “With GEA, they have a partner who can help turn those commitments into reality, combining deep process and utilities knowledge with a holistic sustainability approach.”

That partnership mindset reflects GEA’s own ambitions. By helping customers reduce emissions, GEA also advances its own climate targets. Engineering for a better world, in this sense, is a shared journey.

As billions of people go through their daily routines tomorrow morning, the products they use will feel just as familiar. But behind the scenes, the way those products are made is changing. With our holistic engineering approach, GEA NEXUS is helping HPC manufacturers ensure that everyday comfort comes with a lighter footprint, today and for generations to come.

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