Most spent coffee grounds end up in landfill, where they rot and release methane. Kaffe Bueno, a Danish company founded in 2016, built its business on the opposite idea: that the grounds left in every café are a raw material rich in oils, antioxidants and fibres that the cosmetics and food industries will pay for.
In 2021 the European Innovation Council agreed. It granted €2,490,687.50 to build a demonstration biorefinery near Copenhagen, and the EIC Fund later joined the company's Series A. The refinery opened in 2023. By the end of 2025, the company had posted its largest loss yet, had spent most of the equity it raised, and was about to change chief executive.
Company file
- Legal entity
- Kaffe Bueno ApS, CVR 37894036
- Founded
- July 2016
- Headquarters and plant
- Islevdalvej 211, Rødovre, Denmark
- Chief executive
- Thomas Durhuus, since 1 February 2026
- Investors
- Borregaard (lead), EIC Fund, Dalgaard Group, EIFO, PINC, The Yield Lab
- EIC project
- KB-BIOREFINERY, 1 Nov 2021 to 31 Mar 2024, closed
- Funding type (table)
- Grant first, equity decided later
- Employees (2025 accounts)
- 19
What Kaffe Bueno Sells Today
Kaffe Bueno is an ingredients supplier, mostly to personal care. Its range includes Kaffoil, the oil fraction of coffee, which the company says has been sold as a cosmetic active since 2019 and distributed by Givaudan since 2020; Kaffage, an anti-ageing active; Kaffair, for hair and scalp; and KLEANSTANT, a surfactant that won Gold in the functional ingredients category of the ICI Best Ingredients Award 2025, according to the company's listings. In November 2025 it presented clinical results for Kaffage.
The company is also in a leadership transition. On 1 February 2026 Thomas Durhuus, an industrial biotechnology executive, took over as chief executive from co-founder Juan Pablo Medina, who had led the company for eight years and "remains a significant shareholder", according to Kaffe Bueno and the recruiter Coulter Partners.
The Technology: Fractionating a Waste Stream
Brewed coffee leaves behind grounds that still hold most of the bean's oils and much of its fibre and antioxidant compounds. Kaffe Bueno's process separates them in sequence: an oil fraction for skin and hair care, melanoidins (the brown compounds formed during roasting) and phenols with antioxidant properties, and a fibre residue for food uses such as prebiotic fibre and clean-label colours. The EIC project's report says the team reached "99.8% efficiency" in solvent recovery, the figure that matters most for both cost and environmental credentials in solvent extraction.
The claim to be first is the company's own. What is verifiable is that the Rødovre plant exists: it opened on 29 September 2023, and co-founder Juan Pablo Medina then described food ingredients from "prebiotic fibre" to "clean-label caramel colours" in the pipeline.
What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows
KB-BIOREFINERY ran from November 2021 to March 2024 under the 2021 Green Deal challenge. Its objective was a demonstration facility for 200 tonnes of coffee by-products a year, with plans to expand to 1,200 tonnes. The closing report lists equipment installation and permitting, a refinery "designed to process 250 tons", optimised extraction of melanoidins and phenols, in vitro performance studies, and patents secured for processes and applications.
- A working demonstration biorefineryDeliveredOpened in Rødovre in September 2023, within the project period.
- New cosmetic and food ingredientsDeliveredKaffage, Kaffair and KLEANSTANT launched alongside Kaffoil; an industry award in 2025.
- Expansion towards 1,200 tonnesNo evidenceLarger plants have been announced as plans; no second facility or volume processed has been published.
- A commercially viable businessOpenGross profit was negative in 2025 and the loss was the largest in the company's history.
The capacity numbers deserve their own chart, because they change with nearly every document.
What Kaffe Bueno Has Achieved Since the Award
The investment record is unusually clear for an EIC beneficiary. The January 2024 Series A of €6.2 million was led by the Norwegian biochemicals group Borregaard, whose chief executive Per A Sørlie said the approach "aligns well with Borregaard's business model", and included the EIC Fund. An industrial investor with its own biorefinery business is a meaningful endorsement. The workforce grew with it, from 8 in 2023 to 19 in 2025.
The Money: A Hard 2025
Kaffe Bueno's filed accounts, reported by Proff and matched for 2025 by ownr, do not disclose revenue. Gross profit, the closest public measure of sales, swings from year to year and was negative in 2025 at minus DKK 7.14 million. The 2025 net loss of DKK 21.81 million included a tax charge of about DKK 3.1 million on top of a DKK 18.71 million pre-tax loss.
Equity tells the rest. It jumped from minus DKK 1.01 million at the end of 2022 to DKK 38.34 million at the end of 2023, the period of the refinery and the Series A. It then fell to DKK 12.66 million by the end of 2025. The 2025 drop equals the 2025 loss exactly: no new equity came in that year.
The runway question
At the 2025 burn rate, DKK 12.66 million of equity does not last long. The 2026 accounts will show whether new capital or new revenue came first.
Why Europe Should Care
KB-BIOREFINERY was funded under the EIC's Green Deal challenge, and it is a clean example of what the EU means by a circular bio-based economy: a waste stream that currently emits methane in landfill, turned into ingredients the company says carry "at least 80% less emissions than current alternatives".
The strategic risk is the familiar one for European industrial biotech: the science and the first plant are here, but the capital to build at industrial scale is harder to find. Kaffe Bueno's larger facility has been announced repeatedly and located nowhere yet.
What the company said
The world's first coffee biorefinery, scaling from a demonstration plant to thousands of tonnes and a global ingredients business.
What the record shows
A real refinery, real products and serious investors, but no published processing volumes, no second plant, a negative gross profit in 2025 and equity down by two thirds in two years.
The Verdict
Built, backed, not yet proven
The EIC's grant built what it was meant to build, and the EIC Fund followed with equity, which few 2021 winners can show. Kaffe Bueno has products that customers and award juries like. What it has not shown is that turning coffee grounds into ingredients can pay for itself: 2025 was its worst year financially, and its capacity plans have grown faster than its capacity. The new chief executive's first job is to close that gap.
Kaffe Bueno has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.
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