GoodMills Senior Management Circle 2026 · Krems an der Donau · 8 September 2026
The intelligence behind the keynote: what is coming, what it means for milling, and what leaders do.
mills
countries
grain a year
turnover · BY 23/24
leaders in the room
Motto: Leading through Change, Embracing the Future
The executive summary
You have already led through profound change. The next chapter builds on that experience, with a different clock.
LLI reported group EBT of −€56.6m in FY2024/25, while its milling segment delivered +€30.7m. The group loss was driven principally by BayWa. Milling provided a profitable foundation through a difficult year.
lli.atGermany went from nearly 19,000 mills in 1950 to around 2,500 in 1980 and 500 today. European Flour Millers recorded around 15,000 European mills in 1960 and some 3,800 companies in its 2020–21 manual, with average capacity use around 65%. Its current facts page counts more than 3,000 mills. These are sector figures, not GoodMills utilisation.
muehlen.org · iaom-eurasia.info · flourmillers.euMETR’s updated task suite finds a post-2023 doubling time of 131 days for the task length an agent completes at 50% reliability. ARC-AGI-2 moved from leading models below 5% in May 2025 to GPT-6 Astra at 95.0% in September 2026. A benchmark result is evidence of capability; it is not a guarantee for every real-world task.
metr.org · arcprize.org · arcprize.orgIn 2025, 19.95% of EU enterprises used AI, up 6.47 percentage points. Denmark reached 42.03%; Romania 5.21%, Poland 8.36% and Bulgaria 8.55%. Eurostat’s enterprise survey covers businesses with at least 10 people employed in its surveyed sectors. Different starting points call for shared learning, with local support.
ec.europa.euBühler says Whitley Bridge requires one operator for the whole mill, with more than 15,000 data points collected across production. It opened in 2021. World Grain describes Bühler’s Silvan Trunz’s diagnosis: “the biggest obstacle is not the technology but the satisfaction with the status quo.”
buhlergroup.com · buhlergroup.com · world-grain.comMicrosoft finds 81% of leaders feel safe suggesting new ways of working with AI, versus 67% of employees. A customer-support study found 34% productivity gains for novices, with minimal gains for experts. WEF expects 39% of existing skills to change by 2030. GoodMills has already announced its Grain IQ academy for 2026: a practical place to begin.
microsoft.com · nber.org · weforum.org · goodmills.comThe keynote, in six threads
From a Roman millstone to intelligent mills: the threads shared with GoodMills on 2 September, connected to the evidence.
Thread 01
20 A.D.
A millstone dated to 20 A.D. was unearthed under the Castellmühle site. On that same site, GoodMills built a mill with “Milling on Demand”. The long history belongs to you. So does the next chapter.
millermagazine.comThread 02
<5% → 95.0%
In May 2025, leading models remained below 5% on ARC-AGI-2. By September 2026, Astra reached 95.0% on the semi-private set. Plan for capability to move while your project is still being built.
arcprize.org · arcprize.orgThread 03
1–3 September
The release window spans Fable 5.1 on 1 September, Gemini 3.8 Flash and Muse Spark 1.3 on 2 September, and GPT-6 Astra on 3 September. Four models across three days. Release dates follow the cited research trackers; the changing capabilities are the point.
llmgateway.io · artificialanalysis.ai · theneuron.aiThread 04
~8 months
Epoch measures about eight months for frontier performance to reach consumer hardware, and a roughly 40× annual price decline for GPT-4-level performance on PhD science questions. These are measured trends, not a universal adoption deadline. In your supply chain, the NGT regulation entered into force on 16 July 2026; most provisions are expected to apply from mid-2028.
epoch.ai · epoch.ai · europarl.europa.eu · consilium.europa.euThread 05
22,000+
Counterpoint reports more than 22,000 humanoids shipped in H1 2026, up nearly 300% year on year. BMW says Figure 02 supported more than 30,000 X3 vehicles in around 1,250 operating hours. Schaeffler’s announced rollout begins in December 2026, with a four-digit deployment planned by 2032. These are shipments, a factory case and a commitment: three different kinds of evidence.
counterpointresearch.com · press.bmwgroup.com · roboticstomorrow.comThread 06
32%
McKinsey finds 32% of respondents’ organisations skipped a software purchase because they could build it with agentic coding tools. Only about 6% are AI high performers; nearly three-quarters of that group redesigned workflows. Amazon’s Andy Jassy asked for at least a 15% increase in the individual-contributor-to-manager ratio by Q1 2025. Leadership increasingly means designing the work, not just supervising it.
mckinsey.com · aboutamazon.comFrontier update · 7 September 2026
The latest model releases, the benchmarks behind the headlines, and what has actually been demonstrated.
Source check · 7 September 2026
The frontier moved while this keynote was being prepared.
Fable 5.1, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Muse Spark 1.3 and GPT-6 Astra arrived across the release window of 1–3 September. The practical opportunity is to learn what the newest tools can do for real work, with the same care used to commission any new equipment.
anthropic.com · artificialanalysis.ai · llmgateway.io · openai.comRelease dates and published results in the research snapshot. Scores are attributed to the named test; they are not interchangeable.
| Model / lab | Released | Published evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Fable 5.1Anthropic | 1 Sep 2026 | 65.7% on the AA Intelligence Index; 81.2% on SWE-bench Pro.anthropic.com · benchlm.ai · codingfleet.com |
| Gemini 3.8 FlashGoogle | 2 Sep 2026 | AA Index 59 at high reasoning; $0.75 / $3.75 per million input / output tokens through December.artificialanalysis.ai |
| Muse Spark 1.3Meta | 2 Sep 2026 | 62.1% on the AA Intelligence Index, as listed by BenchLM.llmgateway.io · benchlm.ai |
| GPT-6 AstraOpenAI | 3 Sep 2026 | 95.0% on ARC-AGI-2 at max reasoning; cybersecurity capability classified Critical by OpenAI.openai.com · arcprize.org · openai.com |
| Claude Opus 5Anthropic | 2026, before Fable 5.1 | 96% on SWE-bench Verified; 63.0% on the AA Intelligence Index.benchlm.ai · benchlm.ai |
| Grok 4.6xAI | 12 Aug 2026 | 60.9% on the AA Intelligence Index, as listed by BenchLM.llmgateway.io · benchlm.ai |
| Kimi K3Moonshot AI | 16 Jul 2026 | 59.7% on the AA Intelligence Index, as listed by BenchLM.llmgateway.io · benchlm.ai |
| GLM-5.3Z.AI | 2026; exact date unverified | 59.5% on the AA Intelligence Index, as listed by BenchLM.benchlm.ai |
| GPT-5.6 SolOpenAI | 9 Jul 2026 | 58.9% on the AA Intelligence Index, as listed by BenchLM.llmgateway.io · benchlm.ai |
| Qwen3.8-Max / Qwen3.8-27BAlibaba | 3 Aug / 2 Sep 2026 | SWE-bench Pro: 67.7% for Max and 61.7% for 27B. Vendor-reported results.llmgateway.io · codingfleet.com |
| Benchmark | Published result | What it measures / conditions |
|---|---|---|
| SimpleBench | Claude Fable 5 · 81.9% | Below the 83.7% human baseline. The human reference is a small sample of nine participants; this is a specific common-sense test.simple-bench.com · lmcouncil.ai |
| Humanity’s Last Exam | Claude Fable 5.1 · 65% | Tool-assisted result. Expert-written questions; no single human baseline. Scores without tools are a different comparison.benchlm.ai |
| ARC-AGI-1 | GPT-6 Astra · 98.5% | Semi-private evaluation; high / xhigh reasoning.arcprize.org |
| ARC-AGI-2 | GPT-6 Astra · 95.0% | Semi-private evaluation; max reasoning. Above the 85% Grand Prize target; the target is not an average-human score.arcprize.org · arcprize.org |
| ARC-AGI-3 | GPT-6 Astra · 62.71% | Standard harness, max reasoning. Provider Adapter results use different conditions and are not interchangeable.arcprize.org |
| SWE-bench Verified | Claude Opus 5 · 96% | Published coding leaderboard snapshot. Solving benchmark issues is different from operating a production system.benchlm.ai |
| SWE-bench Pro | Claude Fable 5.1 · 81.2% | Vendor-reported scores unless otherwise noted by the leaderboard; treat small gaps cautiously.codingfleet.com |
| AA Intelligence Index | Claude Fable 5.1 · 65.7% | Composite index, reported by BenchLM. It does not measure the same tasks as the individual tests above.benchlm.ai |
| ExploitBench | GPT-6 Astra · 100% | OpenAI evaluation without production safeguards. This is a research test result, not unrestricted public access.csoonline.com · openai.com |
3 September
NVIDIA announced an agreement to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. An announced agreement is distinct from a completed acquisition.
blogs.nvidia.comFor a miller: keep the ability to choose tools and suppliers as the technology market changes.
6 September
OpenAI says it has reached its automated research intern milestone: well-defined tasks under human direction, including work that takes a skilled researcher days. Its next target is an automated researcher by March 2028.
openai.comThis is the company’s reported milestone and future target; people still set priorities and judge results.
3–4 September
OpenAI classified Astra as its first Critical cybersecurity model: 100% on ExploitBench without production safeguards, and two previously unknown zero-days found during testing. Enterprise access is off by default at launch.
csoonline.com · openai.com · openai.comFor a miller: agree who may connect an AI system to business data and operational tools, and who remains accountable.
This week’s benchmark check
ARC Prize reports 95.0% for Astra on ARC-AGI-2. On SimpleBench, the best published score is Claude Fable 5 at 81.9%, below the 83.7% human baseline.
arcprize.org · simple-bench.com · lmcouncil.aiTest the actual job you want done. A benchmark is evidence about its own task, not a universal licence to delegate.
In this week’s business debate
In McKinsey’s 2026 survey, 32% of respondents said their organisations skipped at least one software product or feature because they could build it internally with agentic coding tools.
mckinsey.comFor a miller: a small, useful workflow can start with the people closest to the work. Include maintenance and ownership in the decision.
Your world
The pressures are real. So is the expertise this room has built by working through them.
Demand
Gollegger named “stagnant European demand, declining margins and lack of efficiency” as consolidation drivers in his historical Krefeld-construction interview. millermagazine.com
German households bought nearly 10% less bread in 2024 than in 2019. Bakery purchasing reached about 45% of households in May 2024–April 2025, versus 52% five years earlier. This is household reach, not a bakery market-share measure. lebensmittelpraxis.de
Margins
Bühler puts raw materials at up to 80% of milling costs. Small gains in yield therefore matter directly to the economics of the mill. buhlergroup.com
The annual global wheat benchmark fell from about $360/t in 2022 to $173/t in 2025 — a 52% decline. These are nominal annual averages, not local procurement prices. fred.stlouisfed.org
Energy
For energy-intensive industry in 2025, EU electricity prices were roughly double US levels and more than 50% above China, according to the IEA. iea.org
Leadership implication: make energy performance part of everyday operating decisions, alongside quality and yield.
The raw-material cycle · annual averages
Global price of wheat · nominal US dollars per metric tonne
| Year | US dollars / tonne |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 163.26 |
| 2020 | 185.51 |
| 2021 | 265.79 |
| 2022 | 360.17 |
| 2023 | 272.33 |
| 2024 | 201.19 |
| 2025 | 173.09 |
Consolidation
Germany: almost 19,000 mills in 1950 → 2,500 in 1980 → 500 today, in the milling association’s account. muehlen.org
Europe: around 15,000 mills in 1960 and 3,800 companies in the association’s 2020–21 manual, which reported average capacity use of about 65%. The current facts page says over 3,000 mills. These are sector figures, not GoodMills utilisation. iaom-eurasia.info · flourmillers.eu
Austria had 92 mills in 2020; the largest five produced 63% of its flour. landschafftleben.at
The UK cleared ABF–Hovis on 16 June 2026. In the US, nearly 50% of flour-milling assets changed hands in 21 days in May 2014. world-grain.com · bakingbusiness.com
Digital adoption
In 2025, 19.95% of EU enterprises used AI, up 6.47 percentage points. Eurostat covers enterprises with at least ten people employed in its surveyed sectors. ec.europa.eu
| Population | Year | Using AI |
|---|---|---|
| German food companies | 2019 | 8% |
| German business overall | 2026 | 41% |
Both cover companies with at least 20 employees. Different years and populations: this is not a food-industry trend line. bitkom.org · bitkom.org
Talent upstream
In the EU’s 2023 farm-manager data, 61.0% were aged 55 or over, 5.6% were under 35, and 71.4% had practical experience only. These describe farm managers, not mill employees. ec.europa.eu
Austria had the EU’s highest share of young farmers: 24.1%. Here, “young” means under 40. ec.europa.eu
Leadership implication: capture experienced people’s judgment and make it easier for the next generation to learn.
In your own words
“Not a single one of the 100 or so grain industry companies taking part was able to say that they’d had a successful year.”
In the same account, Wellcome said AI had improved quality controls for incoming grain and enhanced production efficiency. goodmills.com
“The future of milling will revolve around people who can combine modern production, new technologies and the human element.”
GoodMills announced its Grain IQ academy for 2026, starting in the Czech Republic with UK Flour Milling: learning in an app, practice in the mill and support from a mentor. goodmills.com
From field to flour to food
The frontier already reached the mill. Now the opportunity is to connect what happens upstream, in production and at the customer's door.
Upstream · the field
John Deere’s second-generation autonomy system uses 16 cameras and can be retrofitted to certain existing machines, as announced at CES 2025. prnewswire.com
About 18% of EU farms used precision-farming technology in 2023 — but managed roughly 44% of agricultural land. Adoption by farm count and by land area tell different stories. ec.europa.eu
The JRC already combines Earth observation and crop models in its monthly MARS yield forecasts. publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu
GoodMills supports the Sustainable Wheat Initiative’s goal of 30% lower wheat and flour emissions by 2030. Around 80% of wheat’s footprint arises on the farm, according to Milling and Grain. goodmills.com · millingandgrain.com
At the mill · the process
Bühler introduced Mill E3 in 2019. Its first operational plant opened at Whitley Bridge in 2021, with more than 15,000 data points and, according to Bühler’s case study, one operator for the whole mill. buhlergroup.com · buhlergroup.com · buhlergroup.com
SmartMill has prototype solutions making autonomous decisions on grinding gaps and flour moisture. A fully self-learning mill remains the programme’s ambition. world-grain.com
Launched in May 2025, the SORTEX AI700 uses convolutional neural networks to inspect colour, shape and texture, initially separating barley, wheat and rye from oats. buhlergroup.com
Downstream · the customer
US food-sector robot installations grew 30% in 2025, while automotive installations fell 1%, according to the International Federation of Robotics. ifr.org
Nestlé announced 16,000 role reductions in October 2025 over the following two years, alongside a focus on automation and faster decisions, as reported by Food Dive. fooddive.com
Bimbo Bakeries’ demand forecasting incorporates weather, local events and information from routes and retailers. automationworld.com
TechCrunch names Unilever and Land O’Lakes among Microsoft Frontier Company’s early partners. techcrunch.com
Making more of what is already there
DairyReporter reports that Nestlé’s Zest pilot identified 4.8 tonnes of edible surplus on a single production line. Across the project, 201.9 tonnes were redistributed to people. The single-line finding and the project-wide redistribution are different measures. dairyreporter.com
Interpack 2026 · adjacent food processing
Manufacturer claims for specific equipment and comparison conditions; not independently audited savings at GoodMills.
| Equipment | Manufacturer claim |
|---|---|
| Lucent cocoa roaster | At least 20% less energy per batch than the preceding Tornado roaster |
| CompactMix | Up to 30% less energy than conventional models |
| TurbuBake Smart oven | Up to 15% less energy consumption |
| OptiBake wafer oven | Up to 50% less energy than conventional gas-heated systems |
Bühler release · 7 May 2026. buhlergroup.com
A possible destination
Keynote interpretation drawn from the evidence below. This is a strategic scenario, not a measured outcome or a promise that every element will be deployed by then.
| Layer | The opportunity | Evidence today |
|---|---|---|
| The mill | Set the desired flour characteristics; let connected systems adjust and benchmark performance across sites. | SmartMill prototypes already adjust grinding gaps and moisture. Bühler’s Yield Management System compares performance and recipes across plants. world-grain.com · buhlergroup.com |
| People at the mill | More output per operator, with people focused on product quality, oversight and continuous improvement. | Whitley Bridge demonstrates a mill operated by a single control-room operator. buhlergroup.com |
| Grain intake | Deep-learning inspection becomes an ordinary part of protecting quality and gluten-free integrity. | The CNN-based SORTEX AI700 is a launched product, with an initial application separating other grains from oats. buhlergroup.com |
| Procurement | Combine commercial judgment with weather, satellite observations and crop-model forecasts. | The JRC MARS Bulletin already supplies monthly EU crop-yield forecasts. publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu |
| Supply base | Bring farm-level agronomy and carbon data into procurement and the emissions ledger. | GoodMills has joined the Sustainable Wheat Initiative; most of the wheat footprint arises on farms. goodmills.com · millingandgrain.com |
| Raw material | Plan separate routes for eligible new genomic varieties and organic grain, with clear traceability. | The NGT framework is expected to apply from mid-2028; NGT plants are excluded from organic production. europarl.europa.eu · consilium.europa.eu |
| Product development | Build margins through functional, plant-based and clean-label ingredients alongside commodity flour. | GoodMills Innovation already develops functional ingredients and plant-based solutions. goodmills.com |
| Customer interface | Connect milling decisions to the demand signals of bakeries, stores and delivery routes. | Bimbo Bakeries uses forecasting inputs including weather, local events and route-driver observations. automationworld.com |
| Leadership | Leaders learn the tools themselves and make workflow improvement a continuing part of work. | Bühler’s SmartMill account identifies satisfaction with the status quo as the central adoption obstacle. world-grain.com |
Seven countries, one GoodMills
Different harvests, brands and starting points. A common capacity to learn from each other.
Local expertise · shared ambition
3 mills · Schwechat, Rannersdorf, Graz-Raaba
Footprint in the FY21/22 company presentation, including the organic mill. The Schwechat project will consolidate organic production currently at Rannersdorf.
assets.new.siemens.comBrands in everyday life
Fini’s Feinstes · Farina · Küchenperle · Eselmehl
Regional brands are supported by the secondary LLI profile.
goodmills.com · de.wikipedia.orgAround €25 million is being invested in the new organic mill at Schwechat, with completion planned for 2027 on the existing site.
ots.atAustria had 92 mills in 2020. The 5 largest produced 63% of its flour.
landschafftleben.at24.1% of farm managers were young farmers, under 40, in 2023: the highest share in the EU.
ec.europa.euThe line for this table · keynote interpretation
Austria can bring its next generation of farmers and its next generation of mills into the same learning story, then share it across ONE GoodMills.
Leadership in practice
The keynote meets the leadership commitments you already share. The next step is to make them tangible in everyday work.
Preparing “people and organisations for a world we do not yet know.”
A 131-day post-2023 capability doubling calls for leaders who keep revisiting what is possible. Make change part of the operating rhythm.
With an approximately 8-month frontier-to-consumer-hardware lag, focus the team on a useful outcome and revisit the route as the tools improve.
WEF expects 39% of existing skills to change by 2030. Create space for practice, safe data use, thoughtful review and learning from mistakes.
Only about 6% of McKinsey respondents are AI high performers. Hands-on leaders can redesign workflows and retain clear ownership of the outcome.
Leadership Commitments: exact wording supplied by GoodMills in the client brief; internal, not a public framework.
| Evidence | Published result | What it means here |
|---|---|---|
| Safety to suggest new ways of working with AI | 81% vs 67% Leaders vs employees | The room may feel less safe to your team than to you. microsoft.com |
| Managers make space for AI experimentation | 78% vs 59% Leaders vs employees | Make permission visible in everyday work. microsoft.com |
| Sharing tips, learnings and mistakes | 61% vs 36% Frontier Professionals vs other AI users | This comparison concerns AI user groups, not seniority. assets-c4akfrf5b4d3f4b7.z01.azurefd.net |
| Productivity in a customer-support rollout | 14% average · 34% novice / low-skilled · minimal for experts | Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond’s study measures support agents, not milling productivity. Use it as a reason to test how expertise can spread. nber.org |
| Skills and jobs by 2030 | 39% of skills transformed or outdated 170M jobs created · 92M displaced · net +78M | WEF employer projections cover multiple economic and technological trends. This is not an AI-only jobs forecast. weforum.org |
| Exposure in advanced economies | ~60% of jobs may be affected by AI | IMF estimates exposure, which includes augmentation. It is not a forecast of jobs lost. imf.org |
| Shadow AI and breaches | 20% of studied organisations As much as USD 670K additional breach cost | IBM reports breaches linked to unsanctioned AI. Give people useful approved tools, clear data boundaries and review. ibm.com |
| Psychological safety in manufacturing | 51 work teams | Edmondson found that learning behaviour mediated the relationship between psychological safety and team performance. Help people surface mistakes while they can still become lessons. web.mit.edu |
The future-historian's lens
Aragorn's forecasts and interpretations, offered as a hopeful frame for action. Their timelines are his own, distinct from the measured evidence above.
Speaker-supplied forecasts and interpretations. The linked sources provide present-day context; they do not validate or endorse Aragorn’s forecasts. These are possibilities to prepare for, not GoodMills targets or established outcomes.
Aragorn’s forecast
Capability will compound faster than familiar planning cycles allow for.
METR measured a post-2023 doubling time of 131 days for its 50%-reliability task horizon. This measures agent capability on a task suite, rather than business results.
metr.orgA hopeful future for milling
A mill that keeps learning can turn each improvement into better grain use, more consistent flour and more room for invention. Build a learning rhythm that updates as the tools improve.
Aragorn’s forecast
Around 150 million humanoid robots by 2030; around 600 million by 2035.
For scale, Counterpoint reports more than 22,000 humanoids shipped globally in H1 2026, up nearly 300% year on year. Aragorn’s long-range forecast is a separate, much more expansive scenario.
counterpointresearch.comA hopeful future for milling
Imagine more of the lifting, carrying and routine inspection handled by machines, with people developing safer processes, better products and stronger customer relationships. Start with a useful, measurable job inside the mill.
Aragorn’s forecast
30–70% job displacement by 2035: the end of forced labour, not the end of purpose.
This is Aragorn’s forecast and interpretation. GoodMills already names a purpose that reaches beyond any job description: “Nourishment for a better, plant-based future.”
goodmills.comA hopeful future for milling
A future with less compulsory routine can make more room for learning, care and creation. For GoodMills, the hopeful destination is nourishing people with less waste and helping colleagues share in that progress.
Aragorn’s forecast
Human–AI convergence: leaders running teams of hundreds of agents within 2 years.
Aragorn sees intelligence becoming something we work with continuously. The practical seed is already visible in research: an AI assistant improved novice support-worker productivity by 34%, with minimal impact on experienced experts in that study.
nber.orgA hopeful future for milling
Picture a leader exploring harvest scenarios, mill performance and customer needs with a team of agents, then setting direction with the people closest to the work. Make judgment, learning and accountability part of that expanded team.
Aragorn’s forecast
Aragorn argues that institutional forecasts can miss exponential change by orders of magnitude; resilience will matter more than a single consensus prediction.
The grain-market analogy is familiar: GoodMills’ own Scott Wellcome described deep uncertainty about growers’ next decisions and the industry’s outlook. Treat uncertainty as a condition to prepare for.
goodmills.comA hopeful future for milling
A resilient miller keeps options open: adaptable operations, trusted supplier relationships and people who learn together. Build a business that can flourish across several plausible futures, and revise the forecast when the evidence moves.
Follow the evidence
Sources from the research files, fetched on 7 September 2026, with publication dates and measurement limits kept alongside the claims.
Research fetched and links checked 7 September 2026. Original reference years and source qualifications retained. Some automated rechecks were unavailable.
Capability progress does not guarantee economic returns. These perspectives examine productivity, implementation and reliability.
