Three GEM BIB 2016 Alumni, co-founders of Kaffe Bueno, receive €2.5 Million grant from the EIC to build Europe's 1st coffee bio-refinery

Juan Medina, Alejandro Franco, and Camilo Fernandez, all three originally from Colombia,  came up with the idea for Kaffe Bueno during their entrepreneurship module while pursuing their BIB at GEM.  After 5 years of hard work, the European Innovation Council has awarded a €2.5 Million grant to Kaffe Bueno through their EIC Accelerator program. Only 65 deep-tech companies out of over 4,000 applicants were selected. Kaffe Bueno will use the grant to advance its product pipeline and build Europe’s First Coffee Bio-refinery, in Denmark to further unlock coffee’s health potential!

The cons of coffee consumption

Coffee is among the world's most consumed beverages with over 2 billion cups consumed daily worldwide. Last year, the world consumed over 10 million tons [of coffee beans], and Europe accounted for about 30% of that.

This reflects the beverage’s obvious high demand but says nothing about what happens to the remaining coffee grounds. Today, about 60-70% of coffee grounds worldwide end up in a landfill, a large portion is incinerated for energy production, and a very small percentage is recycled into briquettes and pellets, mushroom growing, or fertilizers. 

In general, coffee’s value chain emits tons of CO2 emissions, from farming to brewing, and transport (they travel approx 10,000 km to Europe) and make no sense to incur in all these emissions to only use less than 1% when brewed.  Meanwhile, the personal care and food industries are looking to reduce the CO2 emissions of their products while turning “waste” into a resource. Upcycling certainly is one of the best solutions to address these problems. Using the remaining 99% is just one of the many ways Kaffe Bueno aims to reduce CO2 emissions along its value chain. 

Benefitting from the beans' biomass

For the last 5 years, Kaffe Bueno has been researching and developing processes to further break down coffee into its composing molecules to develop health-promoting ingredients. Plus, it has identified and filed two patents for key applications within cosmetics and nutraceuticals.

These ingredients have the potential to offer the personal care industry high-performing solutions to phase out once and for all synthetics and petrochemicals out of consumer everyday products. Especially, from the face care, body care, hair care, sun care, and makeup markets. 

The goal is to unlock coffee’s full health potential by breaking coffee by-products into their composing molecules and producing health-promoting ingredients for different industries. By doing this, Kaffe Bueno will be the first company worldwide to utilise 100% of coffee’s bean biomass.

Kaffe Bueno is a Danish bioscience  company established in 2016 . The company specializes in using green chemistry, deep-tech, and biotechnology to break down coffee grounds into their composing molecules, and using these to produce high-performing ingredients for the industries responsible for society’s wellbeing, personal care, nutraceuticals, and functional foods & beverages. 

Read the original article on Kaffe Bueno's website