NEXE Innovations Inc (TSX-V:NEXE, OTC:NEXNF)., a leader in plant-based materials manufacturing, revealed that it has completed the factory acceptance test (FAT) for its assembly, filter form, and dosing automation.
The Vancouver, British Columbia-based company said the successful test was finalized on October 26, 2021, at its manufacturing partner's facility in Europe.
“This is the first of two custom machines that were ordered by NEXE in February 2020, pre-pandemic,” added the company.
NEXE expects the equipment to arrive this month at its headquarters in Vancouver, followed up with a site acceptance test (SAT) conducted by both its operations team and European partners.
READ: NEXE Innovations launches its first first coffee pods which are compatible with Keurig single-serve brewing systems
“We expect this equipment to be commissioned within two weeks of successful SAT,” added the firm.
The high-speed automation was designed and engineered based on NEXE's proprietary specifications for the company's Keurig-compatible NEXE Pod. “As standard automation in the space was not sufficient to assemble our compostable polymers, most of the processes were pioneered by NEXE and its partners,” noted the company.
NEXE expects to receive the second assembly and filling machine for Keurig compatible pods in early 2022, increasing NEXE's production capacity to over 100 million annual Keurig compatible pods.
"We are incredibly proud of the technology that we have developed; it is truly for coffee lovers," NEXE president and director Ash Guglani said in a statement. "This proprietary automation allows us to dose more volume of coffee per capsule compared to leading competitors."
The factory acceptance test is a process that evaluates the equipment during and after the assembly process by verifying that it is built and operating in accordance with design specifications. NEXE said the successful FAT was based on the following parameters:
- Machine capacity resulted in 200 capsules per minute with a mechanical efficiency of over 93% and mechanical downtime at less than 3.5%;
- The total packaging material loss was less than 4% and overall quality performance was greater than 96%; and
- Capsule filling target weights were set to 12g and maintained this target within 0.96 of a gram. The capability index (CPk) of 1.8, is much better than the standard of 1.3, indicating a very stable and capable filling operation.
"The FAT results prove that NEXE is able to consistently produce our pods at a high rate while maintaining the performance and taste profile that our customers demand from a superior pod. This means that we will be able to continuously produce our pods without losing the integrity of the product up to a capacity of at least 50 million pods per year," added Guglani.
NEXE will soon have custom automation equipment for the production of pods that are compatible with both of the two-leading single-serve coffee formats: Keurig and Nespresso OriginalLine, addressing a sizable portion of the coffee pod market.
"This successful test demonstrates that NEXE's plant-based materials can be assembled at production speed and proves the scalability of the technology," added Guglani. "This moves us one step closer to increasing our facility production capacity by 50 million pods with each dosing line."
The single-serve coffee pod and capsule market was pegged at US$25.07 billion in 2020 and is projected to register a compound annual growth rate of 7.07% from 2021 to 2026, according to a report from Mordor Intelligence.
Started in 2015, NEXE leveraged 3D printing to design, prototype, and patent for the world's first compostable single-serve coffee pod born out of the need to replace plastic. NEXE’s patented, fully compostable, plant-based coffee pods can be used in both Keurig and Nespresso machines — the two most popular single-serve machines in the world.
Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com
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