Innovating for impact: shaping better solutions for customers

Industrial production is being asked to use fewer resources, become smarter and keep equipment productive for longer. At GEA, that is changing how innovation happens: engineering, customer insight, digital expertise and service come together earlier – when a solution can still be shaped at its core.

The pressures on industrial production keep multiplying. Plants need to use less energy and water, make better use of materials, respond quicker to changing markets and keep equipment productive for longer. Meanwhile, connected systems, data and AI are expanding what machines can do even years after installation.

This changes the nature – and challenge – of innovation. A highly efficient machine may still fall short if serviceability enters the discussion too late. A digital solution has less value if it is added after equipment has already been designed around different assumptions. And a sustainability assessment carried out near the end of development can measure environmental impact, but it has much less power to shape it.

For GEA, that reality is changing how ideas become solutions and how they evolve over their lifetime. Customer insight, circular design, digital expertise, service and resource efficiency considerations are increasingly coming together earlier – while teams still have room to change course.

“It is no longer enough to build an excellent machine and think about the rest later,” says Dr. Nadine Sterley, GEA’s Chief People & Sustainability Officer. “We want to develop equipment, digital solutions and service as a system that keeps improving performance over the lifecycle. Innovating for impact means creating the conditions for that: strong customer insight, sustainability and collaboration from the start, together with the courage to test ideas and learn early.”

Ambitions that raise the bar

This shift is closely tied to GEA’s Mission 30 strategy. By 2030, the company aims to generate more than 60 percent of sales from sustainable solutions – technologies that help customers use resources more efficiently and reduce their environmental impact. In 2025, the share had already reached 45.7 percent.

The ambition goes further. All newly launched products are to be circular-ready as of 2030, with aspects such as durability, repairability, material use, recyclability and end-of-life strategies considered in their design. GEA also aims to raise its Vitality Index – the share of sales generated by products introduced within the previous five years – to 30 percent. In 2025, that figure stood at 19.2 percent.

At the same time, GEA plans to more than triple digital sales to over EUR 200 million by 2030 and grow service sales by more than six percent annually between 2024 and 2030.

Taken together, these targets create a demanding development brief. A new solution may need to consume less energy and water, fit into a more circular lifecycle, generate value through digital capabilities, yet still be easy to maintain and optimize over many years.

“Our customers operate in resource-intensive industries with long product life cycles,” says Peter Lauwers, CEO of GEA’s Pharma & Food Applications division. “Focusing on resource efficiency in our equipment is therefore a clear business opportunity for us. For our customers, it lowers operating costs; for us, it creates differentiation in competitive markets.”

That logic is moving further upstream in GEA’s innovation work, to the point where a concept can still be fundamentally changed. It also shapes how improvements are documented. GEA’s Add Better label identifies solutions that are significantly more resource-efficient than their predecessors. More than 50 solutions now carry the label, supported by standardized, ISO-compliant calculations and external validation from TÜV Rheinland. For customers, this performance evidence makes improvements easier to judge. For GEA teams, it becomes a reference point for the next development.

Starting with the problem

GEA has deep roots in engineering. But technical excellence alone does not guarantee that an innovation addresses the most valuable problem. Sales and service teams can bring recurring operational requirements into development, while customer feedback is used to test assumptions before they harden into specifications.

“Cocreated solutions are adopted faster, because they start closer to the reality of the customer,” says Dr. Florian Vogt, Vice President Sustainable Solutions & Innovation at GEA. “In close collaboration with our customers, we can identify where energy, water or material reduction matters most in the customer production processes – and where an innovation creates the greatest value.”

GEA’s network of around 40 test centers across 12 countries plays an important role here. Customers can work with GEA specialists to test processes, validate products and simulate production conditions before committing to industrial-scale implementation. At the same time the GEA team can understand the customer’s problem in a realistic environment and thereby better solve it.

From collaboration to industrial scale impact

The value of this approach becomes clearer in projects where no single discipline could have delivered the result alone:

The crucial shift: bringing expertise in earlier

Innovation only creates impact when the right expertise shapes it from the start. That’s why GEA brings together service, R&D, sustainability and digital specialists at the earliest stages of development.

In practice, that means service specialists can contribute while equipment architecture is still taking shape. Digital teams can identify what data should be generated and where connected capabilities could create value. Sustainability experts can examine energy, water, materials and lifecycle impacts while there is still room to alter the design. Customer-facing teams can challenge whether the proposed value proposition addresses a problem that customers are prepared to solve.

The timing matters. Industrial products often remain in development for years and in operation for decades. An early decision can shape energy consumption, maintenance effort, upgrade potential and digital value for much of a product’s life.

Nurturing continuous progress

GEA is also creating more room for experimentation in a business where products still have to perform reliably under demanding industrial conditions. Mature engineering companies have good reasons to manage risk carefully. Yet ideas can be lost when uncertainty is squeezed out too early.

The aim is to test assumptions and prototypes early, identify weak ideas before large investments are made and give promising ideas room to evolve.

Formats such as hackathons and sustainathons create space for that work. GEA also recognizes internal inventors and teams through local Inventor Awards and its global Better World Awards program, while partnerships with universities, STEM programs and external innovation networks introduce fresh perspectives.

The next step in an engineering tradition

Many of the practices now being spread across GEA are already visible in individual teams and projects. The current work builds on that base, helping strong practices developed in one corner of GEA travel across the company.

For Peter Lauwers, that starts with the people doing the work. “What gives me confidence is our team at GEA – their craftsmanship, curiosity and commitment to quality,” he says.

That combination has shaped GEA engineering for generations. The task now is to give it greater reach: to learn faster and involve the right expertise while the important choices are still open. For equipment that remains in service for decades, those early choices have a long life.