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Redcup Coffee Ltd
 
Main Business Activity: Coffee machine and coffee provider/recycling 

 

Sector: Same as above

 

Knowledgebase Organisation:Imperial College London 
“The programme has helped us develop our recycling service, which will give us a USP for our corporate customers”.

 

“I take a genuine delight in the amount of waste that doesn’t go to landfill because we take it away – that’s very satisfying”.

 

“The funding we were able to raise really helped us develop our idea”.

 

  • Clear picture gained of where to take the innovation,
  • New product developed using a scientific source that would otherwise not have been available,
  • In talks with a major composting company who are interested in distributing the product.

Main Business Activity - Supplier of coffee services to corporate clients

Project Outline - Creation of a new greener venture recycling used coffee grounds into environmentally friendly compost for gardens

 

Already an established and successful provider of coffee services to corporate clients, Redcup Coffee wanted to create a new greener venture, by collecting their coffee grounds and recycling them into environmentally friendly compost.  To achieve their new business idea they sought the help of the Knowledgebase Collaboration project… and the co-operation of slugs. 

Jeremy Knight, founder of Redcup, a Park Royal coffee supplier, has built his corporate coffee services business to a turnover “in the millions”. He launched Redcup as he saw an opportunity to supply to companies who understood the value of having coffee facilities for their staff at work or in the company coffee bar. Clients like Bacardi, Unilever and the London Business School have enthusiastically bought into the concept and he now has a strong corporate client base.  As Jeremy grew the business he noticed a secondary opportunity, in the increasing interest in corporate re-cycling and a demand amongst some of his customers to take away their used coffee grounds. 

 

Jeremy was keen to find a commercial use for the grounds instead of simply adding to land fill, and so he launched Greencup, a recycling service that collects your used coffee grounds and turns them into environmentally friendly compost for the garden. Jeremy was well placed to launch his new environmentally friendly venture as he already had a corporate client base and the logistics in place to deliver coffee and collect grounds. However, he was full of questions, in particular was the old wives’ tail that coffee grounds repel slugs, true? If so, what compost formulation would be most effective and could they convert the grounds into compost with known qualities e.g. an established shelf life? 

 

Through the Knowledgebase Collaboration project Jeremy was introduced to Denis Wright, Professor of pest management at Imperial College, London. Professor Wright worked with the newly established Greencup to asses the practicalities of developing the compost. “We’re trying to ascertain if it works; on which species and what proportion of grounds to compost is the most effective”, says Professor Wright. The team at Imperial College also carried out toxicity studies to make sure the compost only worked on the slugs, and didn’t kill plants. The test results were positive and showed that the compost effectively repelled the common slug varieties found in gardens. Professor Wright is currently completing his work on the most effective concentrations of the compost.  

 

“Greencup seems to have struck a chord,” says Jeremy, especially with companies who see re-cycling their coffee grounds as a way to boost their credential as an environmentally conscious organistation. “We already have more than a dozen blue chips on board”, says Jeremy. His field operatives are already collecting grounds from businesses across London and the South East and the company has begun producing the compost at a specialist location. 

 

The future looks even brighter for the venture, they are currently in talks with a major composting company that’s interested in distributing the product. Jeremy is thrilled with the future prospects of Greencup, speaking about the company’s future he said, “who knows sales may even overtake the existing business, but until we have all the research done, we’re not going as large as we might, if we end up supplying 300 garden centre’s we’ll be happy”.