Koppie’s sustainable coffee innovation - summary
- Coffee has the third highest CO2 footprint after meat and cacao
- WWF links coffee to major tropical deforestation between 2005 and 2017
- Koppie creates bean-free coffee alternative using fermented chickpeas and peas
- Lifecycle assessment shows Koppie emits one kilogram CO2 per kilogram product
- Start-up plans 1,000 tonnes production by 2026 with hybrid coffee blends
Like many Belgians, Koppie co-founder Daan Raemdonck loves the daily ritual of coffee.
But, despite 10 years working at alternative milks manufacturer Alpro, most recently as its marketing director, he’d never realised that came at a significant cost to the environment.
“I came across a 2018 article from Oxford University that analysed the CO2 footprint of foods,” he remembers. “To my surprise, number one was meat, but number two was cacao and number three was coffee.
“That for me was eye-opening. I’d been working at Alpro, and so this topic matters to me, [but] I had expected cheese, yoghurt or milk to be next, and suddenly there’s cacao and coffee. That completely struck me.”
Curiosity piqued, Raemdonck began to take a closer look into the topic. “I quite quickly stumbled across the fact that there are some really big concerns around coffee, and specifically the supply of coffee going forward.” According to the WWF, for example, between 2005 and 2017 more than 80% of tropical deforestation was concentrated in just six commodities, including coffee.
Such concerns have already sparked a raft of ‘beanless’ blends, utilising plants like mushrooms, chicory and carob combined with caffeine to emulate the taste and aroma of classic coffee.
But for Raemdonck there was a clear gap in the market: “Most of these alternatives come in an instant form, and as a mainland European coffee drinker, that’s not coffee. I expect my coffee to be brewed fresh – there are very few alternatives that allow you to do that, and virtually none that allow you to create an espresso.
“So, I had this idea, there must be a better way to do this, right?”
Making a ‘moonshot’
Rather than create a blend, Raemdonck’s plan was to identify a single-ingredient alternative to the coffee bean, one that would look, taste and even behave in a similar way.
Too often, “we dig something up, we roast it and we sort of pray that it tastes like coffee. And then when clearly it doesn’t, we start adding things and hope that the combination starts tasting like coffee. We took a different approach.”
Instead, Raemdonck turned to a small team of bioengineers to help him identify “a bean that could be used just like coffee” using the aromas created during the coffee roasting process as a blueprint.
Though, “it’s clear that there’s no ingredient today that has all the elements [of coffee] present, we thought let’s find one ingredient that has some of those elements and start adapting as we go.”
The team tried everything from fruits, vegetables, roots and nuts, he says. “Anything that would keep a bean shape.” From that experimentation, pulses like chickpeas and yellow peas emerged as clear early winners, not least as they were robust enough to withstand the start-ups patent pending fermentation process.
“We adjust everything that’s inside the chickpea and add flavour components that we need for it to taste like coffee. But it remains a pea. That’s the beauty of it, because once we’ve done the fermenting it behaves virtually like coffee. You can roast it like coffee, on coffee machinery. You can grind it like coffee and you can brew it like coffee.”
There do remain gaps in the flavour profile. Chlorogenic acid, for example, a naturally occurring polyphenol present in unroasted coffee beans, aren’t found in pulses. “And you cannot ferment chlorogenic acid with non-GMO strains. So that’s a gap we have and we can’t fix it. But we’re pretty close, despite not having one of those basic elements present in coffee.”
Crucially, the single-ingredient alternative has a dramatically lower carbon footprint.
“Based on our last lifecycle assessment, our CO2 equivalent emissions per kilogram is one kilogram. That is extremely low. Even the best coffee is going to be at least double that, and the average coffee we can find is 10 times that.”
Out of stealth mode
Koppie emerged from two years in stealth mode earlier this year.
It’s faced numerous challenges getting to this point, admits Raemdonck. Two years ago, a taste test with industry experts fell flat. And aside from flavours, emulating the physical properties of coffee beans in order to make espresso and capsule formats has also proven extremely difficult. “Even if you have a product that tastes and even smells quite similar, getting the physical extraction parameters right is extremely complex. Up until six months ago any espresso machine would just block [the product].”
It resolved that issue in the summer – one of several milestone moments in the last 12 months for the start-up.
“A year ago, we did a blind taste test with coffee experts against any other alternative you could find here in Europe. And we already outperformed that comparative set. That’s when we said, now we have something.”
In June, the company closed its pre-seed round of investment, led by Nucleus Capital and joined by Mudcake, Rockstart, and other investors. The cash will be used to support pilot collaborations with roasters, further product development and support product scale-up, with plans to produce 1,000 tonnes in 2026.
In addition to filter and espresso formats, Koppie is also now available as a liquid concentrate, suited to RTD coffee-style drinks or dessert applications. The team is now looking to develop an instant variety too.
“Then the last barrier is commercial traction, finding our first customer,” says Raemdonck. Rather than a full replacement for traditional coffee, the brand is looking to position itself as a hybrid option, he explains. “The beauty of our products for both retailers and for coffee companies is that we can sell them the fermented dried bean. And with that, they can just blend it together with coffee, roast it together, grind it, package it.”
Raemdonck also hasn’t ruled out blending in other ingredients into Koppie further down the line. “We might want to add things to close that gap further. But we’re aiming for that moonshot. If it’s possible to have just one bean, we’ll keep progressing towards that.”
