Revive Eco, a Glasgow-based sustainable start-up, has secured a landmark commercial contract with France’s SAS Pivert, enabling it to expand its innovative upcycling process for coffee grounds into industrial-scale production. The company’s patented technology creates a sustainable alternative to palm oil, intended for use across diverse sectors, including cosmetics, cleaning, pharmaceuticals, and food.
Revive Eco is also continuing its second crowdfunding round, and with two weeks to go, the team has increased its funding target to £300,000. Launched a week ago, more than 90 investors have already joined the investor community, with £200,000 raised so far.
Founded by Fergus Moore and Scott Kennedy in 2015, while doing their undergraduate degrees in entrepreneurship at the University of Strathclyde and both working in coffee shops, the company extracts natural chemicals from spent coffee grounds.
Moore said: “The patented technology developed by our amazing technical team is something that has scope to positively impact the future of how a host of products from across the beauty, food and drinks industries are made and developed across the world.
“While the skincare market has made drastic changes in the amount of palm oil it uses, the change is still not nearly enough, and they have increasingly started moving to alternatives like coconut oil, which is now having the same devastating impact on rainforests and biodiversity.
“Coconut plantations actually provide a lower yield than palm, so there is an argument that this is having an even worse environmental impact than palm deforestation has.
“It’s apt that we’re doing the crowdfund as the COP16 Biodiversity conference takes place in Columbia, which is calling on action being taken against the silent crisis of biodiversity loss, which is one of the most devastating repercussions of increased palm oil production.“
He added: “We are in an extremely exciting moment in the business’ life cycle – to enable to us to continue to drive the company forward we are seeking investors to join our journey, so that we can continue work towards our long-term vision of replacing virgin materials such as palm and coconut derivatives for skincare and food and drink applications wherever possible.”
Revive Eco’s new contract with SAS Pivert was recently marked at the UK Embassy in Paris, attended by representatives from the Scottish Government, Scottish Development International and the European Institute of Innovation & Technology Food.
The new partnership with the European chemistry and biotech specialist will see the teams create coffee oil using surplus coffee from Costa Coffee.
Kennedy commented: “Our team has worked incredibly hard over the last couple of years to develop a scalable and sustainable process that can deliver the impact we are aiming for.
“In the last 12 months, we have gained a deeper understanding of the market in which we want to operate in and we know that ingredient manufacturers are constantly looking for new processes and ingredients to produce to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
“We have had so much support from Scotland, the UK and in Europe to take the business to where it is right now, and we thank everyone who has invested so far.”
Revive Eco has also carried out trials with big brands in the UK and Europe, as well as attending In-cosmetics Global in Paris earlier this year to showcase newly developed ingredients, including coffee oil and surfactant.