German Dairy Giant Bauer Opens Production Centre for Plant-Based Milk & Yoghurt
Germany’s Bauer Group has opened a production and innovation hub for plant-based dairy products in Bavaria to bring its manufacturing in-house.
Bauer Group is betting on the strength of Germany’s local infrastructure and raw material supply chain to meet the growing demand for plant-based dairy alternatives.
The company has inaugurated a new production and innovation facility in the Bavarian town of Wasserburg am Inn, which will enable it to produce the soy base for its non-dairy milk and yoghurt products in-house, instead of sourcing it externally.
It will source the raw materials from farms in the surrounding region, helping it shorten the supply chain and reducing transportation emissions. Bauer has asked its supplier farms to add crops like soybeans to their operations, as part of a wider strategy to keep its production locally focused.
The technical foundation for the facility was provided by engineering giant GEA, which worked on the turnkey project for around 15 months. Production at the plant is set to begin next month.
New centre built on technical foundation from GEA
GEA said it supplied and implemented the complete process technology for producing the soy base for Bauer’s new facility, from raw material intake to the finished concentrate that will fuel its milk and yoghurt alternatives going forward.
It’s the first such project at this scale for the engineering company, which served as a single-source provider for Bauer through the initial idea, process development, and eventual operational plant.
GEA took on each step of the process: receiving and storing the raw soybeans, mixing and grinding, solids separation via decanters, thermal inactivation with heating tech, tank storage, water treatment, and the associated cleaning systems. The fermentation and filling plant to process the base into plant-based dairy products will be operated by Bauer alone.
Bauer awarded the contract to GEA in May 2025, with installation beginning this January. The latter brought together several expert teams, including dairy processors from Munich and from its process test centres in Ahaus and Oelde, which helped develop the initial process concepts and performance data beforehand.
“Because GEA brought together testing, process design, engineering, and implementation under one roof, our project was able to move full steam ahead,” said Sebastian Bodmeier, technical project manager at Bauer. “We had a single point of contact for the entire process chain – that saved us time in every phase of the project without having to compromise on quality.”
Bauer talks up regional production for Germany’s plant-based market leadership
GEA project manager Michael Klamt said the project demonstrated why the company views plant-based food as a strategic growth area: “The fact that we were able to support Bauer as a single-source partner from the initial feasibility study all the way to a fully operational plant was essential to reliably meeting such an ambitious timeline.”
The engineering company has been investing heavily in alternative protein manufacturing, having poured millions into two Application and Technology Centers in Germany and the US since 2023.
These hubs help food, ingredient and biotech companies develop and test pilot-scale production processes for precision fermentation, cell cultivation, and other biomanufacturing applications.
GEA also operates food tech hubs in Skanderborg, Denmark (for bioreactors), Oelde, Germany (for cell separation), and Bakel, Netherlands (for plant-based foods), and is working with the Biotechnology Fermentation Factory, an open-access site on the Nizo Food Innovation Campus in Ede, Netherlands, to deliver a precision and biomass fermentation upscaling line.
Bauer, meanwhile, is looking to capitalise on Germany’s position as the leading market for plant-based foods in Europe. Purchases of milk and yoghurt alternatives grew by 8% and 10% in 2025, respectively, collectively representing 47% of the sector’s overall sales in the country.
“From both a sustainability and a business perspective, I am convinced that the opening of our production and innovation centre is a crucial step toward moving forward in a future-oriented way,” said Bauer CEO Heiko Modell. “We firmly believe that regional production of plant-based milk alternatives is the future.”