VANCOUVER, BC, Canada – NEXE Innovations Inc., a leader in plant-based materials manufacturing, is pleased to announce that it has completed its Factory Acceptance Test (“FAT”) for its assembly, filter form and dosing automation. The successful test was finalized on October 26, 2021 at our manufacturing partner’s facility in Europe. This is the first of two custom machines that they ordered by NEXE in February 2020, pre-pandemic. The company anticipates that this critical piece of equipment should arrive this month at NEXE’s headquarters in Vancouver, followed-up with a Site Acceptance Test (“SAT”) conducted by both their operations team and their European partners. They expect this equipment to be commissioned within two weeks of successful SAT.
This 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.
The Company 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,” said Ash Guglani, President of NEXE. “This proprietary automation allows us to dose more volume of coffee per capsule compared to leading competitors.”
The FAT 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. 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%.
- 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.
This machine means that 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 and addressing a sizable portion of the growing potential 60 billion per year coffee pod market. The Company also plans to continue to purchase additional equipment to increase production capacity as required to fulfill growing demand.
“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 measured at US$25.07 billion in 2020, and it is projected to register a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.07% from 2021-2026, according to a report from Mordor Intelligence.1
Learn more about NEXE Innovations online at https://nexeinnovations.com/investors/.
*NEXE Innovations Inc. is not affiliated with, endorsed, or sponsored by Keurig®. Keurig® is a registered trademark of Keurig Dr Pepper Inc.
**NEXE Innovations Inc. is not affiliated with, endorsed, or sponsored by Nespresso®. Nespresso® is a registered trademark of Société des Produits Nestlé S.A.
