Transcript:
Hello, this is Ann Marie Mohan, senior editor with Packaging World Magazine. I just wrapped up a story for our march April issue on Cambio Roses and its new Keurig-compatible coffee pod. What’s exciting about this pod is that it’s aluminum, and this is the first time that this has been done. We’ve seen Nespresso pods, they’re aluminum, but they’re for a different type of machine. This is for filter coffee. So I really enjoyed reporting on the story because of the players and the story partially, but also because it is such a great innovation. I interviewed the CEO, Kevin Hartley, who’s a very engaging and fun person to talk to. He told me that the goal of the company was to make a product that makes the consumer’s socks go up and down. And with this new package, I’m pretty sure they’re doing that.
So Cambio was co-founded by Hartley and his partner Anne Hutson, along with a team of Keurig employees, engineers and so forth, who put a lot of time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears into making this a reality.
So they started with coffee from small farm roasters, which was a part of their goal for making a better coffee. And then they developed this aluminum pod. As you can see, it’s the same size as you would have for your traditional plastic Keurig K-Cup pods, but it’s aluminum. And then if you look here and you see these ridges, these are flavor ridges, and they were a development also of Cambio and were present in their original coffee pods, which were polypropylene, which was also a big development at the time. The flavor ridges, Hartley told me, keep the paper filter inside away from the sides of the capsule so that you get maximum flavor extraction. Another thing about the aluminum pod he told me is that it preserves the taste and the flavor much better than the plastic. He said the plastic has been so lightweighted that you can practically see through it, and it does not provide the freshness that good coffee deserves.
You’ll also see on the top, which is very interesting and different, is what they call an Easy Peel tab. So this is meant for after you brew your cup of coffee and you want to recycle this capsule, this tab makes it easy to pull the lidding off and then extract the filter and the grounds. However, one thing we know about coffee capsules of this size is that a lot of times they don’t make it through the sorting system at a MRF because they’re so small. Anything under two by two can slip through the screens at the beginning of the sorting process. So I asked Hartley about that and he said their solution at the moment, and something that they’ve talked to with MRFs as a possibility or a solution, is to stack them. So you finish your coffee, you empty the capsule, and then you stack a bunch together, pitch them in your curbside recycling bin, and they should go through the recycling stream.
Another option. Now they announced that TerraCycle is also working with them, and you can get a mailing label from them and mail them back to TerraCycle, who will recycle them. So that’s the pod.
They also put a lot of work into the carton design, so they wanted it to be minimalist and Hartley talked about it being gallery-able. So something you would see in an art gallery. So as you can see, the big story here is the aluminum pod, right front and center. And then they also have here a window, a die-cut window so that you can see the pod, the actual pod, the aluminum pod, and that’s the first impression they want to make. They also talk on the back about the world’s Better Cup and where they’re sourcing their coffee from. Then inside Hartley said to me, we want to make this beautiful impression, but we also want people to know that we’re real people.
So here inside is a picture of Hartley and Hutson, along with a copy that talks about how they founded the company and what their intent is. They also have inside is a card that talks about the rich aroma of curated organic coffee, and they talk more about the world’s better cup and the choice of an aluminum pod.
So I recommend you read the article. The link is below. It’s a really new approach to coffee packaging. We see the problem with the pods ending up as pollution or landfill, and here is a solution, a viable solution, and Hartley hopes that this scales up so that recyclers will put in processes to collect these as they come in, and so that we will have more recycling of coffee pods. So check out the link below, and thank you so much for listening. PW
Read the article, “Startup Debuts First Recyclable Aluminum Coffee Pod”
