Key Business Outlooks For 2026: Norbert Hübler, Global Sales Director, Koenig Group
Our ambition is to act as a single, reliable point of contact for our customers—from process design and technology selection through implementation, service, and ongoing optimization. This means delivering holistic solutions combined with consistently high levels of customer care and technical expertise.
We asked the most important players in the European and American baking industry about their expectations for the year ahead. They talked about opportunities, changing consumer expectations, what type of support the industry needs, but also about the drawbacks of an unstable political climate and the challenges that come with labour shortage and energy prices increasing.
Norbert Hübler, Global Sales Director, Koenig Group
How would you assess your company’s performance over the past year?
The year 2025 was once again shaped by challenges in global supply chains and ongoing geopolitical developments. Despite these external factors, the year developed in a stable and resilient manner, confirming the right direction of our strategic positioning. In the industrial segment, we observed a rather cautious investment climate and longer project planning cycles. At the same time, demand in the artisan and commercial baking sector was exceptionally strong, clearly reflecting a growing desire for more efficient and increasingly automated solutions.
What are your expectations for 2026, taking into account the evolving market dynamics?
For 2026, we expect market conditions to remain challenging, but also full of opportunities. While geopolitical uncertainties and cautious investment behavior may continue to influence parts of the industrial segment, we anticipate overall stable development with selective growth across regions.
Demand in the artisan and commercial bakery sector is expected to remain strong worldwide, driven by rising labor costs, skills shortages, and the need for greater efficiency and automation.
Against this backdrop, our focus for 2026 is on strengthening customer proximity and offering future-oriented solutions that combine efficiency, automation, and long-term reliability. This positions us well to respond flexibly to evolving market dynamics and to support our customers in a sustainable way.
How do you foresee the global and regional bakery markets evolving, and what are your company’s top priorities for 2026?
We continue to see strong global demand, particularly in dynamically growing emerging markets, supported by population growth, urbanization, and increasing demand for high-quality baked products. In these regions, European engineering and its reputation for quality leadership are held in very high regard. Against this backdrop, we expect further positive momentum in both global and regional bakery markets.
Our key priorities for 2026 therefore include the continued expansion of our sales and service network. This involves strengthening our own regional organizations as well as working closely with experienced and capable local partners to ensure close customer proximity, fast response times, and sustainable long-term market development.
Regarding market trends, we are focusing on further simplifying line operation to make bakery processes more user-friendly and efficient. At the same time, a strong emphasis is placed on hygienic machine and line concepts that support food safety, reduce cleaning effort, and help ensure consistently high production standards in daily operation.
In 2026, we will also celebrate our company’s 60th anniversary. Since its founding in 1966, the company has been guided by Helmut König’s vision of supporting bakeries worldwide through innovative technology. Our goal has always been to develop solutions that strengthen and support the baking craft. This philosophy has remained unchanged for six decades and will continue to form the cornerstone of our strategic focus in the years ahead.
What have been your primary growth drivers over the past year, and what is the most significant lesson you’ve learned in managing your operations?
One of our primary growth drivers over the past year has been the strong demand for dough sheeting lines that are capable of reliably processing artisan doughs while offering a high degree of product variety. With our Artisan SFM EC and Artisan SFE EC lines, we provide powerful solutions that significantly ease our customers’ daily production and offer a high level of flexibility.
At the same time, we continue to see very strong interest in commercial bread roll lines, which remain one of our core and most important product segments
A lesson we have learned is that our strategic focus is coherent with the current global economic situation. We have a very high level of vertical integration with several production plants in Europe. As a result, we offer a high availability of spare parts and can react better to market fluctuations.
Another crucial factor—and a key to success, especially in challenging times—is our team. The global Koenig team is our most valuable asset. Their expertise, commitment, and close collaboration across regions and functions enable us to remain flexible, innovative, and customer-focused.
As competition in the baking industry intensifies, what strategies are you employing to strengthen your market position? How do you balance operational investments with innovation and R&D?
In an increasingly competitive market, our strategy is driven by a deep understanding of our customers’ production processes and overall value creation. We strengthen our market position by positioning ourselves not merely as a machine supplier, but as a comprehensive solution partner covering complete bakery processes. Our focus is on delivering integrated, reliable, and high-performance solutions that combine equipment, process know-how, and strong service and technical support.
Operational investments are therefore guided by a holistic view of efficiency, quality, and scalability across the entire production line, ensuring stable processes and a competitive total cost of ownership. Innovation and R&D are closely aligned with real customer requirements and concrete process challenges. By moving away from isolated machine development toward solution-oriented innovation, we create the foundation for targeted R&D investments, faster development cycles, and practical solutions that can be seamlessly implemented in real production environments.
What unexpected developments occurred in 2025, and how did they influence your business operations or strategies?
Ongoing geopolitical instability and the resulting economic and trade policy uncertainties had a noticeable impact on our business in 2025. Volatile currency developments and changing macroeconomic conditions affected price structures and international competitiveness, making market environments more challenging overall.
What are the most significant forces driving change in your business for 2026, and how is your company preparing to address them?
The most significant forces shaping our business toward 2026 include intensifying global competition, increasing regulatory and sustainability requirements, and continued volatility in energy prices and supply chains. These factors require both operational discipline and strategic flexibility.
Our response focuses on strengthening operational resilience, expanding our product portfolio with efficient and robust solutions, and selectively investing in innovation where it delivers clear customer value. By balancing short-term adaptability with long-term strategic initiatives, we are positioning the company for sustainable growth in a changing market environment.
From your perspective, what policy, regulatory, or market shifts would most benefit the baking sector in 2026, enabling businesses like yours to thrive?
From our perspective, the baking sector would benefit most from stable and predictable regulatory frameworks, particularly in the areas of energy policy, sustainability, and international trade. Clear, long-term regulations would enable companies to plan investments more reliably and accelerate the adoption of energy-efficient and sustainable technologies.
In addition, support programs that encourage innovation, digitalization, and automation—especially for small and medium-sized enterprises—would strengthen competitiveness across the sector. A level playing field in global trade, with fair standards and reduced barriers, would further enable baking equipment manufacturers and producers to grow sustainably.
Looking ahead to the next five years, what is your vision for the industry, and how is your company positioning itself to shape and contribute to its future growth?
Over the next five years, we expect the bakery industry to continue its transformation toward integrated, efficient, digital, and highly automated production concepts. In response, we are consistently evolving from a traditional focus on individual machines toward a comprehensive solution-oriented approach that spans the entire bakery process chain.
Our ambition is to act as a single, reliable point of contact for our customers—from process design and technology selection through implementation, service, and ongoing optimization. This means delivering holistic solutions combined with consistently high levels of customer care and technical expertise. To support this approach, we are further harmonizing and strengthening the Koenig Group, leveraging synergies across our companies, and aligning our organization even more closely with customer processes and requirements. In doing so, we aim to actively contribute to sustainable growth across the global bakery industry.