GEA : Remarks by Stefan Klebert, CEO

Dear Shareholders, Dear Viewers,

A warm welcome from Düsseldorf to GEA's virtual Annual General Meeting. Thank you for joining us today!

Before speaking about the 2021 fiscal year, I would like to address a challenging topic. A topic that is on everybody's mind and deeply worrying to all of us. The news and images from Ukraine are harrowing. And unfortunately, an end to this war is not yet in sight.

Our hearts go out to all those affected by this war - in particular, to our 50 Ukrainian team members and their families. Their safety is our number one priority. We have done a great deal to protect them as best we can and to guarantee their wellbeing. For instance, we have accelerated the payment of salaries and bonuses to ensure that our colleagues may rely on sufficient funds in the near future. And we have assisted in the evacuation of their families. A crisis management team is closely monitoring the situation and will take further action as needed.

Recently, GEA conducted a global fundraising campaign. Each euro donated by our employees was matched by the company. Ultimately, these contributions added up to 250,000 euros. This amount was transferred to the German Red Cross for the purpose of providing humanitarian aid in Ukraine. Apart from that, there are many additional relief efforts undertaken by GEA. For example, we are lending a hand to farmers in Ukraine by making in-kind donations. We hope in this way, we can do our part to ease some of the suffering. And of course, we join the international community in our hope for lasting peace in the region.

Since the start of the war, we have taken a very close look at our Russian operations, which includes the manufacturing and maintenance of machines and equipment for the local production of food staples, dairy products as well as pharmaceutical applications. Our business activities ensure that the essential needs of the population are met. I am convinced that halting our business in Russia would not impact those who are responsible for this war. Rather, the impact would be felt by many innocent people - first and foremost by our 450 employees and their families, for whom we are responsible. For this reason, we will continue to operate our production sites in Russia to the extent this remains possible. Clearly, we will act in compliance with all laws, regulations and sanctions in place. And, of course, we will continue to actively follow the political and economic situation.

Ladies and Gentlemen, even though I find it difficult to do so, I will now turn to the reason for today's event: To look back on the year 2021 and how GEA was doing over these months.

2021 was yet another difficult year, fraught with various challenges. With 2020 behind us, we had all hoped for a return to more stability in our professional and family lives - some kind of "new normal." Instead, the mutated strain of the virus continued to require our full attention.

The economic ramifications of the pandemic, in particular, presented us with numerous obstacles: Raw materials and other input-materials were running short, supply chains came under pressure and prices went up. So, we put another year behind us that once again required tremendous flexibility, patience and commitment on our part.

We can say with confidence that GEA successfully tackled these challenges. We were alert, responded quickly and our collaboration was excellent. Across the globe, GEA teams have given their best in a difficult environment. We worked closely with our customers. And we have made our organization more powerful and efficient.

We continued our successful journey, and our results speak for themselves. Once again, all our key financial performance indicators improved in 2021. Order intake, revenue and profitability have gone up. In short, despite some headwinds, we have continued to witness a positive upward trend and demonstrated that our measures are gaining traction.

We are also encouraged by our outstanding sustainability performance. Starting from a very strong position, we have managed to further enhance our key sustainability ratings. This fills us with pride.

I will now take a closer look at what we have accomplished.

In the second year of the pandemic, we continued to go out of our way to offer our customers top-notch solutions and service in all areas. This included: the maintenance of existing plants; the on-time delivery of new machinery and components and the realization of large-scale projects. Everyone has done their best to meet our commitments. Allow me to give you two examples:

The first is an ambitious project commissioned by our customer, innocent. On their behalf, we built the world's first carbon-neutral juice production facility in Rotterdam. Its design sets new standards in terms of sustainability. While keeping water consumption and energy demand to a minimum, GEA's technology also significantly reduces waste streams and product losses. To achieve this, we fully leveraged every technical solution available.

The second example showcases Europe's most modern dairy plant in the North Rhine-Westphalian town of Mechernich, which we built for our customer Hochwald. This facility will process around 800 million liters of milk per year. This is equivalent to a volume of roughly 86 milk collection trucks per day. Thanks to our knowhow, we were able to come up with a particularly efficient and sustainable plant design. This dairy is a lighthouse project focusing on resource-efficient production. It shows what we at GEA are capable of.

To a large extent, both projects were planned and implemented during the pandemic. Against all odds, we completed the projects on time and delivered a high level of quality. Our secret to success lies in teamwork. All GEA teams involved have shown an enormous amount of customer focus and motivation. And their cooperation was excellent - across all divisions and national borders. In this context, I would like to say a huge thank you to our great employees worldwide.