“You don’t know GEA, but you deal with us each and every day,” says Nadine Sterley, Chief Sustainability Officer at GEA. From the yogurt in your fridge to the medicine in your cabinet, GEA’s engineering systems power essential production behind the scenes quietly enabling the world to function.
With its legacy rooted in industrial machinery, the German multinational now finds itself at a turning point. Today, more than 95% of its carbon footprint lies beyond its own operations – in supply chains and in how its machines are used by customers. That puts the company at the heart of one of the toughest questions in corporate sustainability: how do you decarbonize what you don’t directly control?
In an era where many industrial players are scaling back their climate ambitions, GEA is doubling down. With a bold net-zero target across all emissions scopes by 2040, it’s embarking on a transformation that goes far beyond compliance, redesigning products, restructuring incentives, and rewiring collaboration across its ecosystem.
This is not a side project; it’s a strategic imperative backed from the very top. When Sterley once asked CEO Stefan Klebert how seriously he takes sustainability on a scale from one to ten, his answer was immediate: “Eleven.” That clarity of intent has set the tone across the company.
That mindset has empowered Sterley and her colleagues to drive change across the company. But this is not a one-woman effort, it’s an enterprise-wide undertaking, with top-level backing and deep engagement across GEA’s 20,000 employees. As climate pressures mount, GEA is betting that industrial engineering – done right – can be a lever for systemic change.
By 2024, GEA had already reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 58% compared to 2019. But that was just the beginning. The company’s real climate challenge lay beyond its factory walls. More than 95% of its carbon footprint came from Scope 3 emissions: the upstream suppliers and downstream customers using GEA machines every day in dairies, breweries, chemical plants and beyond.
In other words: GEA has already cleaned up its own house. Now it needs to enable thousands of others to clean up theirs.
This isn’t just a technical problem; it is an ecosystem challenge. How do you decarbonize the emissions you don’t directly control? How do you enable a dairy processor in India or a pharma plant in Brazil to make decarbonization choices – even when they’re successfully operating legacy equipment under volatile conditions?
For Sterley, the answer isn’t control, it is influence. “The more complex area, where stakeholder interest is particularly high, lies in Scope 3 – the indirect greenhouse gas emissions across our value chain,” she notes.
GEA’s own transformation was only the beginning. The company is reshaping both its operations and its product portfolio – reducing emissions within, while enabling customers to cut carbon and working with suppliers to decarbonize the value chain. This is not an isolated effort, but a comprehensive transformation across the business and its ecosystem. The goal: sustainable, long-term growth driven by intelligent, resource-efficient solutions that work for both business and the planet.
That means rewiring internal structures and engineering processes to put sustainability at the core – and bringing along those who matter most, from skeptical suppliers to cost-conscious customers.
GEA’s role as a technology leader goes beyond its own footprint. It must prove it can engineer change not just for itself, but for an entire industrial ecosystem.
“The transformation began by redefining who owns sustainability.”
GEA’s response to the Scope 3 challenge is not to create a new sustainability silo, but to weave decarbonization into the very fabric of its operations from governance, innovation, product design, to sales. The result is a strategy that aligns climate goals with commercial advantage.
The transformation began by redefining who owns sustainability. It started at the top: the Global Executive Committee leads by example – while the Chief Sustainability Officer, as part of the GEC, ensures that climate considerations are embedded in every strategic decision. Executive compensation is directly linked to emissions reductions, including Scope 3, signaling to leadership and shareholders alike that this is core business, not corporate responsibility.
But the shift goes far beyond governance. In 2023, GEA launched its first internal “Sustainathon,” a company-wide innovation sprint modeled on hackathons, designed to crowdsource ideas from employees for reducing product-related emissions. Over five months, 88 employees across divisions developed more than 60 proposals – from energy-saving software tweaks to bold redesigns of key machinery. The winning teams received funding and direct support from top management. “The Sustainathon promotes fresh thinking and encourages employees to develop radical solutions to reduce the emissions of popular GEA products,” explains Wolfgang Deis, GEA Innovation Process Manager.
With a mobilized workforce and incentives in place, GEA turned to the challenge of reducing emissions across its value chain. The answer: enable customers and suppliers to cut their own emissions, while growing business in the process.
One breakthrough came with the Add Better ecolabel, a third-party validated label that identifies GEA machines and systems that outperform their predecessors by a measurable margin in energy or water efficiency. It’s a simple but powerful proposition for factory operators: invest in new equipment that not only performs better but cuts costs and emissions. GEA’s E-Bake solutions, for example, modernize the baking process with electric heating systems that cut energy use by up to 40% compared to gas models.
Retrofit options enable a switch from gas to electric, saving up to 14%. As resource-efficient technologies, they proudly carry the Add Better label. “Solutions in our Add Better portfolio help customers tackle rising energy costs, resource scarcity, and operational risks,” explains Sterley.
For a holistic analysis of an entire production process, GEA supports customers with Add Better Consulting – a dedicated strategy service that helps set priorities, define roadmaps, and develop effective transition plans. As the essential starting point, Add Better Consulting turns ambition into actionable plans, providing tailored decarbonization strategies, plant transition blueprints, and concrete budget considerations.
Building on these foundations, GEA brings the strategies and blueprints to life with NEXUS, an integrated engineering service solution that optimizes entire production systems – from heating and cooling to cleaning and recovery. The goal is to reengineer processes, not just machines. These end-to-end solutions unlock deep energy and emissions savings, while enhancing operational resilience. For example, GEA’s innovative low-carbon heat network at Heineken’s Manchester brewery demonstrates how integrating sustainable heat recovery solutions can significantly reduce energy consumption and emissions in large-scale manufacturing
These initiatives have helped GEA cut product-related emissions by a third since 2019.
These are not compliance-driven activities. For GEA, sustainability has become a platform for innovation, competitive advantage, and long-term growth. With 41.6% of its revenue already coming from its sustainable product portfolio, and with a target of 60% by 2030, GEA is effectively transforming its business model and the industrial ecosystem in which it operates.
GEA’s journey shows how even the most complex industrial players can move the needle on sustainability through integrated, organization-wide action:
As of 2030, every new GEA product will be “circular ready”. This means that products are designed from the outset to be durable, repairable, and ultimately recyclable.
As GEA moves into the next phase of its transformation, the ambition is clear: make sustainability circular, scalable, and systemic.
As of 2030, every new GEA product will be “circular ready”. This means that products are designed from the outset to be durable, repairable, and ultimately recyclable. This shift in engineering mindset marks a move from linear efficiency to lifecycle intelligence. “We are embedding circular principles into our innovation process – from product design to digital capabilities and service offerings,” says Sterley. “We’re building machines that won’t just run longer, they’ll run smarter, with less waste and more value, over decades.”
That same thinking now drives GEA’s innovation pipeline. The Add Better ecolabel, which spotlights solutions that significantly outperform previous models in resource use, is already gaining traction with customers. The next step: scale it across GEA’s full portfolio, making it a visible standard for low-carbon performance and a key lever in customer conversations.
Sterley is also focused on deepening value-chain partnerships, from co-engineering decarbonization projects with clients to expanding NEXUS, GEA’s integrated systems solution for energy and process optimization. “We’ve seen what’s possible when we work side-by-side with customers,” she explains. “Now it’s time to change the ecosystem together with our value chain partners.”
Although the road ahead remains complex, Sterley is also clear on the opportunity: “This is not just about compliance or risk. It’s about building a future-ready business. One that’s aligned with our customers, our people, and the planet.”
For GEA, engineering for a better world is no longer a legacy promise. It’s a business model and a blueprint for the industrial transition.
This case series was developed as part of a research project supported by Capgemini Invent.
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