Allpress Espresso Announces New Compostable Coffee Bags

Started in 1989, Allpress Espresso is a New Zealand-based gourmet coffee and cafe chain. After a trip to Seattle, founder Michael Allpress saw an early iteration of Starbucks and became inspired to strike out on his own. Upon coming home, he put away his chefs’ knives and took up coffee, opening his first coffee cart and roasting beans in his garage. 

Since then, Allpress has expanded globally to Australia, the UK, Singapore, and Japan, and while business has indeed boomed, recyclable packaging continued to elude the coffee upstart for some time. Keep their beans fresh and tasting great was essential, but so was becoming more sustainable and earth-friendly.

Now, they've debuted an industrially compostable coffee bag; it performs just as well as conventional bags containing petroleum-based plastic, and it joins their line of compostable single-use cups.

In addition to using compostable materials, they took exceptional care to ensure they created something memorable and beautiful. They wanted consumers to have a sensory experience, as they thought the packaging should both feel and sound great when you take it off the shelf, and it gives way to a satisfactory crackle when held.

The new bags retain a kraft paper exterior as well as the brand’s traditional visual elements like the coffee-inspired colors. The outside, save for a removable valve, makes use of inks, adhesives, and paper that are all compostable. Even the interior of the bags comes lined with a plant-based biopolymer, which is also compostable.

While the scrolling side-pattern has been a staple of their packaging for three decades, they updated the graphics with raked lines meant to represent a Japanese zen garden. Each of their six coffees features abstracted illustrations and icons and brings cohesion to their family of products.

Their in-house team of designers updated the packaging, but the construction of the bag was a collaboration with their long term packaging supplier.

“They hadn’t done compostable packaging for coffee, so their expertise in sourcing the materials for us to test and then finding the factories that could use those materials in their tooling was vital,” said Allpress global brand lead Rob Locklear. “Everyone is set up for four corner external seal bags, and we really wanted to avoid that traditional bag construction.”

The coffee roaster recognizes that not all of their customers will have municipal composting in their area, so Allpress will collect bags, and for those with access to compatible waste streams, they also offer compostable (or “green”) bags upon request.

Allpress’s new compostable bags are available now, with 3kg versions coming soon. Meanwhile, the brand will continue to work on improving its packaging further, including a compostable version of their bag valves.