You are not required to report. Your largest customer is.
Many mid-sized companies reassure themselves with an entirely correct formal argument: not listed, below the thresholds, therefore not affected. Legally, that is often true. Operationally, it is a dangerous shortcut.
Regulation in an economy based on division of labour does not operate only where it starts. It affects large companies directly and everyone else through the supply chain. A group required to disclose emissions, energy and supply-chain data cannot invent it. It obtains that information from its suppliers and documents who provided it and who did not. [Evidence: status of Swiss climate-reporting regulation and the impact of EU rules on SMEs]
A rule that does not apply to you therefore becomes a line in the next tender form. At that point, it is no longer a question of attitude but of your ability to supply. A company unable to provide the data may be removed from the shortlist before price or quality is discussed. That is the quietest way to lose a customer: you never even learn that you were in the running.
The time horizon is crucial and routinely underestimated. A machine purchased today will still be on the factory floor in eight years and will then produce the figures you must disclose. A vehicle ordered today will shape the fleet’s footprint well into the 2030s. Investment decisions are therefore always reporting decisions as well, although that becomes visible only later.
The practical conclusion is that ESG and liquidity planning belong in the same discussion. When separated, the long-term argument regularly loses to the short-term one. When considered together, it often becomes clear that the more sustainable option is not more expensive over its useful life but needs to be financed differently.
A supplier uses leasing to invest in energy-efficient production because a major customer requires CO₂ data. The investment pays off through energy savings, order retention and reporting capability at the same time.
Has a customer already asked you for such data, and how long did the answer take?
Category: Invest
Sustainability in SMEs rarely fails because of conviction. It fails because of timing.
Most entrepreneurs I speak with have no fundamental problem with sustainability. Their problem is that the bill arrives immediately while the benefit trickles in over years, in a year when every franc is already counted twice.
That creates a common reflex: ESG is declared a programme. It comes with a strategy, workshop, roadmap, external support and a budget that must eventually be requested. It is then postponed because a programme always looks more expensive than an individual decision. That is not refusal. It is budget logic.
The pragmatic route works in precisely the opposite direction. In mid-sized businesses, sustainability is created not in the strategy paper but in procurement: with the next machine, vehicle, building technology or IT renewal. Each decision will arise anyway. The real question is not whether to decide, but which criteria apply.
That also changes the calculation. An energy-efficient installation is not an additional expense for a report. It is an investment reflected in the energy and maintenance budget. The ESG effect becomes a by-product of a commercial decision, and is robust for precisely that reason.
The pressure does not primarily come from legislators but from the value chain: banks, large customers and tenders that require emissions data. [Evidence: KPMG or PwC survey on ESG requirements for Swiss SMEs] Companies unable to provide it lose orders before price is even discussed.
The financing structure determines whether this route is viable. If every more sustainable option must be paid as a cash premium, the cheaper purchase will often win. If it is spread over predictable instalments, it is measured against operating cost savings, and the result often looks different.
A construction company leases lower-emission equipment and improves both operating costs and its ability to compete in tenders. No programme. One procurement decision.
A provocative question for the room: do SMEs really need an ESG strategy, or simply better procurement criteria?
The strong franc may be the oldest productivity programme in the Swiss economy.
It requires no grant application, no project office and no regard for the annual budget.
In a recent Deloitte survey, 68 per cent of Swiss CFOs identify the strong franc as a burden on margins. Labour costs follow at 58 per cent and energy and raw material prices at 51 per cent. Swiss SME Portal
Swissmem likewise identifies the strong franc, US tariffs and weak export markets as major challenges for Switzerland’s technology industries this year. Swissmem
An export oriented SME has limited influence over any of these forces. It cannot weaken the franc, abolish a US tariff or dictate world market prices.
It can influence its own productivity. How many working hours go into one unit? How much energy? How much scrap, downtime and administration?
That is why investment in automation and modern equipment is not a luxury reserved for good times. It can be a response to structural margin pressure.
Every investment still needs a sound calculation. But the benchmark should not be the purchase price alone. It should include the cost of the existing process.
Swiss companies will rarely win internationally through the lowest wages. They win through quality, innovation and productivity.
The strong franc simply makes that truth more visible.
The term is the most underestimated variable in an investment decision.
Prices are negotiated, interest rates debated and specifications contested for weeks. The term is simply entered. Usually as long as possible, because that lowers the monthly instalment and makes the application easier to approve.
For Swiss SMEs with international business, that is the wrong optimisation. When trade policy decisions can change calculations within weeks and sales markets must be reassessed, a ten-year planning horizon is not a plan. It is an assumption dressed as a forecast. [Evidence: current tariff and trade situation for Swiss exporters, SECO or Swissmem]
The term determines something that appears in no investment proposal: how quickly a company can adapt capacity to a changed market. That makes it a strategic variable rather than a pure financing detail. The same applies to residual values and return points. They determine what a misjudgement actually costs and whether it can be corrected at all.
The uncomfortable consequence is that the lowest instalment is not automatically the best solution. A shorter term costs more per month but may prove significantly cheaper in retrospect because it allowed the company to adapt. SMEs practically never price these option values. The financial industry does little else.
This leads to a different conversation with the financing partner. Not: what is the lowest instalment over eight years? But: what term fits the cycle of this order, this market and this technology? And what happens if the order is not renewed after three years?
Those who ask these questions in advance negotiate structure. Those who ask them afterwards negotiate damage control.
A supplier leases additional production capacity for a fixed-term major order instead of permanently tying up capital in excess capacity. When the order ends, the obligation ends with it. That is not a financing trick. It reflects the economic reality in the contract.
A question for everyone with export exposure: how long are you currently committed, and was that a deliberate decision or the result of optimising the instalment?
Diversification is one of those words almost everyone supports until the bill arrives.
When an export market becomes more difficult, the recommendation comes quickly: enter new markets. Correct, but those markets do not appear for free.
The current environment for Swiss exporters is demanding. In the first quarter of 2026, Swiss exports fell by 4.2 per cent after seasonal adjustment to CHF 66.9 billion. Exports to North America dropped sharply. Exports to the United States were 15.6 per cent below the previous quarter. Swiss SME Portal
Since 24 July, new US tariffs have applied to numerous Swiss goods. SECO
Diversification is therefore sensible. It also needs capital.
A new market may require different certifications, products, packaging, logistics, inventory, sales and service capacity. It may even require additional machinery.
Market diversification is therefore a balance sheet issue. A company that has committed all available liquidity to long lived assets has less strategic room to manoeuvre.
That does not mean ownership is wrong. It means capital commitment has a price that may become visible only when a new opportunity or a new constraint appears.
Diversification costs money. Concentration does too, only at a time no one can predict.
Resilience has become a synonym for standing still. That misunderstanding has expensive consequences.
For several years, many companies have considered it robust to avoid major risks: investments postponed, projects paused, capital retained and workforce planning frozen. It feels responsible and is rarely challenged by boards of directors because caution always wins rhetorically.
But that is rigidity, not resilience. A business that can respond to a shock only by waiting is not resilient. It is blocked, and may not notice until a competitor has proved more agile.
The term comes from materials science. There, it describes not hardness but the capacity to deform and return to the original shape. Hard materials break. That is a better metaphor for corporate leadership than we might like.
Resilience therefore means retaining the ability to act even when the next three years are unknown. A company that cannot predict tariffs, supply chain risks, energy prices and regulation does not need better forecasts. It needs decisions that can be corrected without endangering the business.
This is primarily a question of commitment period, not courage. Equipment used for a defined term and then deliberately replaced, extended or returned creates planning certainty in both directions. Purchased equipment ties up capital and fixes the technology decision for a decade whose course is unknown.
The objection is valid: flexibility is not free. Shorter terms and return options carry a price. The question is what that price is measured against. It is too high if the world remains stable. In a world where tariff decisions can overturn calculations within weeks, it is an insurance premium. [Evidence: current assessment of trade barriers for Swiss exporters, for example by SECO or economiesuisse]
An export-oriented SME modernises its packaging and warehouse technology without burdening its balance sheet for years. It invests and remains agile.
An honest question for the room: is your current caution resilience, or merely well-argued postponement?
A location can look strong in a regional comparison and still come under pressure.
In “Climbing higher”, McKinsey and Swiss AmCham note that around 80 per cent of the CEOs interviewed compare Switzerland with global locations. Those interviewed mainly represent the perspective of internationally active companies.
I consider this finding relevant for Swiss SMEs as well. The right benchmark follows from the customer’s decision. What quality can they obtain elsewhere? How quickly is it delivered? How reliably are problems solved?
Anyone who answers these questions only by looking at familiar competitors may be making the judgement too easy.
The same applies to investment. A new asset should be measured by whether it improves our position in the competition we actually face. Progress compared with our own machine fleet is not yet a sufficient justification.
The strength of a business location grows out of many such decisions. And out of the courage to choose a comparison from which we can still learn something.
Ownership is not a value in itself. It is tied-up capital that expects to be respected.
In many Swiss SMEs, the phrase “we own it” still stands for solidity. That is historically understandable and emotionally relatable. From a business perspective, however, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Every franc tied up in a machine is a franc that is not available for inventory, sales or digitalisation, and cannot fund the pay rise that retains a skilled employee.
In an environment where banks assess applications more selectively, attach greater weight to collateral and take longer to make credit decisions, the role of liquidity changes fundamentally. [Evidence: current survey of lending to SMEs, for example by the SNB or the SME Barometer] It is no longer merely a comfort but a strategic buffer.
A company with liquidity can accept a major order at short notice, reconfigure a supply chain, absorb a supplier’s price increase or acquire a competitor. A company that has tied its liquidity up in fixed assets may have to decline, even though its balance sheet looks healthy.
That is the uncomfortable part of this debate: a solid balance sheet and the operational ability to act are not the same thing. We measure the former carefully and the latter hardly at all.
The objection is familiar and should be taken seriously: over the full term, use often costs more than ownership. True, if the calculation considers only the purchase. It changes once we include what happens to the capital released and what a missed order costs. And it changes again for assets that are needed for only one technology generation.
The decisive question is therefore operational, not ideological: for which assets does ownership pay us back, and for which are we paying only for a sense of comfort?
A trades business leases service vehicles and keeps funds available for spare parts, wages and short-notice customer projects. That is not ideology. It is capital allocation.
How much of your equity is currently standing on the factory floor and not working?
Doing nothing is also an investment decision. Just without a return.
One sentence has been heard remarkably often in meetings this year: “We will wait a little longer.” It sounds prudent. Most of the time, it is an unspoken bet that uncertainty is a temporary condition rather than the operating temperature of the coming decade.
The reasons are real. Growth forecasts are being revised downwards, the path of interest rates remains difficult to read, and tariffs and trade policy can change calculations overnight. [Evidence: current KOF or SECO forecast]
But the bill for waiting never appears in an investment proposal. It shows up elsewhere: in maintenance budgets that grow a little every year; in electricity costs per unit produced; in scrap rates that no one questions because they are considered part of the machine; in downtime accepted as “normal”; and in orders that are never quoted because capacity is lacking.
These costs have an awkward characteristic: they are diffuse. A six-figure investment proposal is reviewed, challenged and postponed. The same amount, spread over four years of repairs, energy losses and foregone contribution margins, never reaches a meeting.
The underlying error goes deeper. We treat investment as a risk and waiting as a neutral position. It is not. Waiting is a position with costs; they are simply recognised later, under different account codes.
This does not mean that every investment is right today. The case against a major investment is often justified. But the alternative to “renew everything” is not “do nothing”. It is to invest selectively where the bottleneck lies and align the financing structure with the uncertainty.
A manufacturing SME does not have to replace its entire machine fleet. It can lease an energy-efficient key machine that reduces scrap and power consumption, with predictable instalments instead of a major capital outlay.
The more honest question is therefore not: Can we afford this investment? It is: How much longer can we afford the old machine?
Who among you has worked through this calculation properly and been surprised by the result?