Tiba has been a staple on the market for over 175 years. The Liestal-based company for heating systems, hobs and ovens has always focused on innovation, as owner and managing director Lukas Bühler explains: “Our mission is to offer technically advanced products.”

In order to make new innovations possible, Switzerland’s largest oven manufacturer with over 100 employees frequently works together with universities. This was also the case in 2020 when it teamed up with the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) as part of an Innosuisse innovation project. The goal: to significantly reduce emissions – and in the process conquer new markets.

In August 2020, the SME decided to launch a joint innovation project with the FHNW. “The FHNW carries out emission tests for us, and we started talking about how our ovens could be improved,” explains Lukas Bühler. For him, it was clear from the outset that the emissions of Tiba ovens needed to be greatly reduced in order to meet the strict requirements of the German environmental label “Blue Angel”. This is still voluntary at the present time, but it marks the direction of future legislation – both in the EU and in Switzerland. Innosuisse approved the project and provided financial support, while the research partner contributed resources, know-how and personnel. Tiba supplied prototypes, materials and components for the laboratory tests, as well as practical input and market knowledge. Industry partner OekoSolve, from which Tiba sources components, also participated in the project.

From 2021 onwards, the FHNW developed a large part of the concept and tested it for feasibility. “We would have had neither the time nor the resources for this,” Lukas Bühler explains. “Without support, all this research and development would not have been possible.” The basic idea: to integrate a catalytic converter into the oven to reduce carbon monoxide emissions and convert these into carbon dioxide. Added to this, an electrostatic particle separator had to be installed which electrically charges and separates the soot particles to prevent particulate matter. The proof of concept was developed at an early stage: the FHNW team assembled the oven according to specifications – and the concept worked.

After two and a half years, the project was completed in mid-2023, and OekoSolve applied for a patent for the electrostatic particle separator. For Tiba, the focus over the next few months was on integrating the solution – comprising the catalytic converter – into a newly developed storage heater. “There has never been an oven with an integrated particle separator before,” notes Lukas Bühler. Until now the separator has been mounted in the flue, which repeatedly leads to complications and additional costs during installation, since the systems are not optimally aligned to one another. “This innovation increases the attractiveness of our brand enormously,” Lukas Bühler says. The new product will boost Tiba’s competitiveness since there are no other ovens on the European market that combine catalytic converters and particle separators.

In April 2025, Tiba will launch the product on the market. “There’s enormous interest in this product,” Lukas Bühler has discovered from resellers across Europe. He estimates that Tiba will sell several hundred of these ovens each year and turn over around one million Swiss francs. The time and money spent on research and development should quickly pay off: Bühler expects the investments to break even within two years. He also believes that the export business – which currently accounts for 70 percent of total sales – will continue to grow thanks to this latest innovation. Tiba wants to leverage the product to tap into new markets such as Scandinavia, where green technologies are high in demand.

“Our product will meet the requirements for this certification for the next 10 to 20 years already,” Lukas Bühler says, assuredly. Emissions are reduced by up to 80 percent compared with previous oven models. The carbon monoxide limit value, for example, has been reduced by more than two-thirds. At the same time, efficiency has been increased by 20 percent, taking it to a highly efficient 90 percent. Tiba hopes that the envisaged German environmental certificate “Blue Angel” will help it stand out from the competition moving forward. If everything goes according to plan, the new oven model will carry the label from July 2025. And what’s more: Tiba is already in talks with the FHNW on a follow-up project aimed at reducing emissions even further.