NEXE Innovations Inc (TSX-V:NEXE, OTC:NEXNF) president Ash Guglani talked with Proactive about the company’s renewed partnership with ecoBeans, a woman-led coffee brand focused on sustainability.
The two companies first partnered in 2023, and ecoBeans has since rebranded, expanding its market focus on Canadian retail and additional product offerings.
Guglani highlighted that NEXE’s capsules are uniquely strong, environmentally friendly, and can deliver a high-quality coffee experience, placing them in the top tier of K-Cups.
Proactive: You've announced a partnership with the rebranded ecoBeans, a coffee brand. Tell us more about this, because you first partnered with them back in 2023.
Ash Guglani: It's a good milestone day for us as we've, you know, we worked with ecoBeans last August to launch their pods. What ecoBeans has done is they've revamped their strategy to focus more on Canadian retail, as well as some OCS business on the West Coast. It's a woman-led coffee company. They have their own coffee initiatives, but it's been rebranded with new packaging and a new strategy. Essentially, we're a good fit for them, given that they were looking for a sustainable option.
We've made a delivery to her of some pallets, and it looks like everything is being sold. She's been getting some good demand. We've launched two SKUs with her, and we'll be launching some new additional product SKUs as she's seeing demand from her retail customers. There are opportunities in the decaf space and potentially even in French vanilla. So it's a good first launch. We're starting to finally get busy.
NEXE, you know, we've also revised our capsule quite a bit from last year. We did a lot of beta testing with some coffee companies, so we've made some revisions to how our capsule works. And, you know, we've got all our in-house vertical integration done. So, you know, we're ready to start producing not just for ecoBeans, but other customers as well. You'll see that over the next little while.
You talked about your new capsules. Tell us what makes them better as well.
You know, we did a lot of beta testing last year with some small companies. We were able to get some feedback from those companies on changes we had to make, even changes with some of the materials like our lidding suppliers and such. There have been some new developments in the industry for compostable lidding, so we've made changes to our lidding to make it a better seal. We've also changed our recipe to make it a stronger capsule.
We have a capsule that can perform in the top 1% of all K-Cups because we can get more volume than most capsules. We have a lot of IP around that capsule. It's great for the environment, but it also can make a really good cup of coffee for K-Cups. That's what we always hear. We will continue to make improvements to the capsules.
We are an innovation company, and having everything in-house is really important to that. That's been the big win going to Windsor. We have good automation partners, but we also have a good workforce that really understands the automation. We've built a good moat in Windsor, and we'll continue to work on innovation around the capsule and make it better. We'll also start looking at other products as well over the next little while.
And will you be looking for other partnerships as well, following the partnership with ecoBeans?
Absolutely. Currently, we're in discussions with some larger companies. We're actually getting ready to make some other deliveries in the next few weeks. So stay tuned. There'll be more conversations to have.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style