All Articles
Food Tech

The Startup Upcycling Coffee Grounds For The Climate

October 13, 2023
x min read
The Startup Upcycling Coffee Grounds For The Climate

A new approach to coffee grounds might be capable of doing a lot of good for the climate.

What’s happening:

  • Danish startup Kaffe Bueno has launched the world’s first coffee biorefinery facility which aims to convert coffee byproducts into valuable compounds
  • The new facility was supported with a €2.5M grant from the European Innovation Council

How it works:

  • Coffee grounds are filled with fatty acids, proteins, antioxidants and many healthy compounds
  • Through chemistry and nanotechnology Kaffe breaks down coffee into its molecular components
  • Those molecular components can then be up cycled into active ingredients for purposes such as soil and crop health, nutraceuticals and even gut health for animals

Why it matters:

  • Upcycling coffee into potentially valuable inputs for other products could play a role in transforming the paradigm that used coffee beans are simply waste

By the numbers:

  • The new biorefinery facility in Copenhagen will have the potential to upcycle 500 tonnes of ground coffee annually
  • Over time Kaffe believes they can increase that capacity to 1,500 tonnes per year

The intrigue:

  • Kaffe Bueno has a partnership with 7-Eleven Denmark for protein rich pastries that use their proprietary upcycled ingredient from coffee by products known as ‘KAFFIBRE’


Discover the world's most disruptive early stage companies with 35,000+ investors.

The markets and trends that matter, made simple.

Join top talent at the world's most respected institutions, companies, and venture capital funds.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.