In brief
Approaching its 100th anniversary, FUCHS faced a unique challenge: it could see growth opportunities across its global footprint but its decentralized operating model made it difficult to clarify which to select on a global level. Working with Innosight, the company distilled more than 1,000 strategic inputs into six growth priorities, creating a shared roadmap for investment, innovation, and growth through 2031.
Challenge: Establishing a global strategy for a decentralized company
For nearly a century, FUCHS decentralized operating model had been a competitive advantage. By empowering local leaders to make decisions close to customers and markets, the company grew into the world's largest independent lubricants company, operating through nearly 70 subsidiaries across 45 countries.
However, growth in global lubricant markets had softened and was expected to remain weak, particularly in automotive and industrial sectors. Meanwhile, demand for many specialized products and application-specific solutions was increasing. The company could see signs of these opportunities, but it needed to define which areas had the greatest strategic potential.
Leadership needed to find a way to bring those perspectives together into a unified global growth strategy. However, that proved difficult in a highly decentralized organization. Market insights were spread across dozens of regional businesses, each with its own customers and understanding of demand.
“We are a company that can manage complexity because our portfolio is so broad and we are close to our customers, but if we want to accelerate growth, we need to focus more on the areas where we can win.”
— Rouven Acquaviva, Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Innovation at FUCHS
Discovery: Local perspectives reveal global growth priorities
To prepare for its next century, FUCHS enlisted Innosight to help identify its most promising global growth opportunities and align its business around a common direction. Rather than evaluating the business through its traditional structure, the team worked closely with dozens of local market leaders and examined customer segments and applications in detail, creating a granular view of the market that made it possible to compare opportunities across countries.
Innosight helped FUCHS as it developed the strategy over several phases. More than 1,000 strategic inputs from across the business were gathered and analyzed, revealing a surprising pattern: opportunities that initially appeared unique to individual markets were recurring across regions and industries.
“The strength of FUCHS has always been its proximity to customers,” says Thiemo Werner, a Managing Director at Innosight. “By bringing those local perspectives together, we were able to identify growth opportunities that were relevant across the global business.”
Through successive workshops, cross-functional teams tested and refined the priorities before validating them with local leaders. By the end of this effort, FUCHS had defined six global focus areas: automotive aftermarket, customer brands, rotary motion, new mobility, performance greases, and special application solutions.
The final phase turned strategy into execution. Each subsidiary translated the six focus areas into a local roadmap, supported by shared metrics that aligned execution across the global business.
“What surprised me most was how much clarity came out of the process,” says Acquaviva. “Once we identified the opportunities that mattered most, everything else became easier to align behind.”
Impact: Financial results confirm strategic momentum
The strategy has become the foundation of FUCHS100, the company's roadmap to its 100th anniversary in 2031. Since its launch, FUCHS has completed the latest in a string of acquisitions focused on specialty lubricants and technical applications, while also working to modernize operations through a company-wide transformation program and deploying a common technology platform across its global business.
By prioritizing six global focus areas through its FUCHS100 strategy, FUCHS can make strategic decisions across its global business while preserving the local autonomy that has long defined the company. The six growth platforms now provide a common framework for prioritizing R&D investments, allocating capital, and focusing commercial efforts, while giving every subsidiary a shared direction.
Financial results confirm the momentum. FUCHS reported record earnings before interest and taxes of approximately €435 million in fiscal 2025. Sales in Asia-Pacific exceeded approximately €1 billion for the first time. It delivered those results despite flat market conditions in parts of Europe and significant currency headwinds.
“Now that we have a clearer view of where we want to grow, everything else makes much more sense," says Acquaviva. "It made it much simpler to translate strategy into action.”
