Fuelled by caffeine, Windsor-based NEXE Innovations has taken a big step forward in its growth, announcing deals last week to supply its compostable single-serve coffee pods to two major new customers.
The company’s Windsor plant will handle the complete manufacturing process, from loading the capsule dose into the pods to final packaging and shipping, to supply American firm EKOCUPS (in its largest order to date), and Ottawa-based Bridgehead Coffee.
“It reflects our ability to attract major players in the coffee industry,” said NEXE Innovations president and director Ash Guglani.
“We are poised to scale rapidly and be a leader in the shift to sustainable solutions by focusing on partnerships with larger coffee companies.”
NEXE Innovations, which transplanted its production operations from Surrey, B.C., to the former JD Norman plant in Windsor in 2022, has the capacity to produce a half-billion pods annually.
The company currently has almost 20 employees, but Guglani said its workforce is growing.
“We’re anticipating, with the way everything is going in Windsor and with the other uses of our technology, that the plant will get a second shift in the coming months,” Guglani said. “We hired some people recently.”
The decision to locate operations in Windsor has turned out to be a winning bet, he told the Star.
“We actually thought we were de-risking in going to Windsor,” Guglani said. “It has a skilled labour force, lots of automation companies and it’s close to the U.S. market where 80 per cent of single-use pods are sold.
“It has been a massive win for us.”
Guglani said access to automation, tool and die and mould-making firms is vital to the company’s grander vision of being completely vertically integrated to control all aspects of its supply chain and production and in diversifying its product offerings.
“NEXE Innovations is actually an innovative materials company,” Guglani said. “Sustainable coffee pods have been a challenge, but it’s just one of the products we can make with our proprietary resin. We plan to go beyond coffee pods.
“There’s a massive single-use plastic market out there that will allow us to expand. There are opportunities in cosmetics, dairy and the medical field for sustainable products.
“We’re working on those now. It’ll be substantial for these industries and those are three big areas that will make us super busy.”
Guglani said NEXE has “two good partnerships” with EKOCUPS and Bridgehead.
EKOCUPS (ekocups.com) is a high-volume online seller of coffee pods and bags, through Amazon and the company’s own website.
Bridgehead Coffee (www.bridgehead.ca) has 17 locations in the Ottawa area. The Canadian firm formed more than 40 years ago was acquired by Toronto-based Pilot Coffee Roasters (pilotcoffeeroasters.com) earlier this year.