So you've developed an edible coffee cup. I mean
, it really is too bad. You're not here
with us because I'd like to try it if not
just for the comedy of eating a cup on set
. But let's get the obvious question out of the
way first. Uh What is it made of?
And, and how does it taste? So uh
good is made from oats and grains is a combination
of rye milk, oat bran wheat, bran,
sugar, salt, oil and water. So it's
very simple ingredients and it tastes like a waffle cone
but uh a bit less sweet. OK, for
anybody who's wondering, I, I understand it does
hold its integrity for eight hours, which is plenty
of time to get through a cup of coffee.
But you're obviously solving a problem here as well.
Can you give us a sense of the, the
scale of the issue around single use plastic line coffee
cups? Absolutely. So, in uh Australia,
we love our coffee, but that creates uh 2.7
million coffee cups every day are used. That's 1
billion per year. And some of the stats says
that uh this number has doubled or tripled after COVID
globally, this number is 250 billion to 500 billion
cups. A majority of these cups are lined with
plastic. So um they are not biodegradable or they
are very difficult to recycle to be recycled and and
unfortunately, the majority of them end up in landfill
. Um So we have created this solution to provide
a very sustainable and waste free option to this massive
problem, right? For this to be impactful though
, you wanna be able to scale up pretty quickly
and significantly. I think when we spoke to you
in May last year, your team was training out
about uh 500 cups a day for clients across Australia
. Can you give us an update on how that
scale has perhaps increased? So we are still very
small manufacturing, our capacity is still 500 cups per
day. Um But we really want more and more
customers or coffee chains, they come on board and
support our solution, really embrace it that this can
be, this has a potential and this can be
a solution to this massive problem. So with that
, uh we are really inviting the big uh coffee
chains uh or small ones uh to um really support
us with this um solution that we have created.
So from a business side, what do you need
to be able to meaningfully scale up because there was
also a lot of conversation about international expansion. So
since last year, we have had few success to
export our product to uh overseas, like uh us
, New Zealand, a few other countries. Um
But the whole concept of our product, we really
want to be sustainable through the value chain. Uh
So we really don't want to ship all over the
world. So ideally, we should have different plans
um across the board. The main challenge obviously is
funding. Um And with this uh financial climate,
it is quite difficult to raise funds for uh product
based start ups, but we are working through it
. And uh we are really focusing on having the
right traction in the market to be able to convince
the investors that uh this solution can be scalable and
can uh expand across the world. Yeah, can
you give us uh some sort of idea about the
cost per unit of making one of these and,
and even if you can't give us a specific number
, uh how does it compare with the manufacturer of
a of a regular single use coffee cup? Absolutely
. So, um as I said, our manufacturing
or our plant is a very, very small capacity
at the moment. Uh Our cops is around$1
to um outlets. Um and uh comparing to normal
disposable cops that cost varies uh depending on the material
they are using and where they are importing it from
. So it can be from uh 10 cents to
30 cents. So obviously, with a small capacity
our cost is not very competitive, but it is
a starting point. And the majority of the time
the consumer buy into it because some, because it
is like a niche product and it's tasty and it
can be a treat and some they really want to
support the initiative behind it and they really relate to
it that this is a sustainable solution. It is
completely waste free a at scale though, you know
, sustainability kind of comes down to so many different
factors from economics like Paul just pointed out, but
also, you know, the ability for, for
consistency to be achieved for convenience for the end consumer
. Uh and and the environmental life cycle too,
right? Have has there sort of been a life
cycle assessment being done? And can you say uh
with, with confidence that this is a product that
you know, can in in all of these ways
replace the other offerings that are already more sort of
conventionally taken up by the market. Sure. So
uh the concept of edible packaging or edible um container
by itself can be completely a waste free and uh
sustainable option. So for our cops, uh we
are making uh our cops from simple natural ingredients,
all locally sourced and we are using a lot of
uh brand which is up cycled or uh by product
of flour making product. Um um Majority of the
time this brand end up also in bean or um
landfill. So, we are bringing it in uh
to produce this simple solution in terms of value chain
or life cycle assessment. Yes, we have done
some study. So we source everything locally. We
manufacture everything locally and distribute locally. And when we
did the comparison and this study, our cops has
around 27% less carbon footprint comparing to normal disposable cops
. So it is looking at the carbon footprint but
also the life cycle and end cycle of what happens
to the end product after it is consumed. So
for our cops, if you eat it completely waste
free, if you can compost it, and if
it ends up in the beanie breakdown naturally, you
can even plant it. So there are a few
options that consumers can have a very sustainable approach to
uh finish this product or they use it.