Fab-Brew-Lous: Kaffe Bueno opens plant for upcycling coffee grounds

In Denmark, a bioscience company dedicated to upcycling coffee waste has opened its first biorefinery.

Kaffe Bueno’s newly inaugurated facility at Rodovre can upcycle 500 tons of coffee grounds annually. The company’s technology converts the proteins, antioxidants and fats that remain in coffee grounds into personal care ingredients, oils, and fibers. The company tells Beverage Daily it chose Rodovre because of its proximity to Copenhagen, a city with a significant biotech industry, high coffee consumption, and recycling infrastructure.

“The biorefinery is where we breakdown coffee—all of its compounds,” cofounder Alejandro Franco tells the publication. “Then with those compounds, we make ingredients for personal care and other industries, too. This is the transition of our pilot lab to a commercial scale up. There we have different technologies going in, which we keep a trade secret. But it’s all in green chemistry biotechnology and nanotechnology.”