From left: Ralph Jenner, Connor Nestor and Barnaby Marshall, co-founders of New Ground's new coffee extraction and processing plant in Auckland. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Seasoned tea drinker Jane Phare is won over at a taste test at New Ground’s new coffee-in-a-can plant in Auckland.
It was the creamy espresso martini that was the decider. Only one word for it – delicious. And no hissing or banging was involved. Instead, coffee aficionado Ralph Jenner poured the dark espresso coffee quietly from a tap in a box, evoking memories of cask wine in the ‘90s.
Watching on in New Ground’s “lab” were fellow co-founders Barnaby Marshall and Connor Nestor, the company’s managing director. These two mates have known each other since they were 14 and five years ago, just for a lark, started experimenting in Marshall’s carport, trying to figure out how to make a barista-quality, freeze-dried coffee that, when boiling water was added, would taste just like one from an espresso machine.
Not only did they figure it out but now the three partners have opened a state-of-the-art production plant in Wairau Valley, capable of producing 25 million cans of coffee a year, and another 15 million serves of freeze-dried coffee and coffee concentrate. Leading the way in coffee’s “fifth wave”, New Ground is producing for local speciality roasters - including Coffee Supreme, Havana, Flight Coffee, Mojo and Raglan Roast - and international coffee roasters.
It’s the espresso coffee concentrate, inside the boxed bladder, that is the basis for the espresso martini. Jenner, head of product, adds the vodka and coffee liqueur (the Herald photographer was driving) and, like a man who’s had plenty of practice, agitates the mixture in a cocktail shaker before gently pouring the liquid into a glass, creamy foam nicely covering the top.
It’s a project New Ground has been working on for the past year. Nearby in the tasting lab is a large silver keg marked NGT – New Ground Technology – full of ready-made espresso martini, alcohol included. All the bar staff need to do is pour out the mixture, with a nitrogen infuser creating the foam as it’s poured. No training, no measuring required.
Jenner and Nestor laugh at the memory of the market research they did in the past year, visiting virtually every bar in Auckland to sample espresso martinis. Now the ready-made martini kegs are due to be delivered to six Auckland restaurants this week.
As part of Jenner’s taste-test offerings, we sip our way through an iced mocha latte, made for Australian ready-made-meal company YouFoodz, a Flight Coffee Strawberry Mocha with oat milk – evoking childhood memories of Neapolitan ice cream – and Raglan Roast’s sparkling Cascara + Peach iced tea to cleanse the palate before the martini.
The tea seems an odd-one-out offering but cascara is made from the outer skin of the coffee cherry so Jenner reckons it’s earned a place in the New Ground family. Besides, he says, he likes having fun in the lab, dreaming up new concoctions – many of which go down the drain but some which make it onto the shelf.
Getting the peach flavour right in the iced tea had him stumped. Peach syrups, concentrates and flavourings weren’t quite right, and then he spotted tinned peaches in natural juice in the supermarket.
“Peachier than a peach,” he says.
The first prototype batch was produced using a kitchen stick blender and a bucket, and straining the juice until the taste was right: peachy but not too sweet.
Jenner is happiest in New Ground’s experimental lab, dreaming up new flavours and when people might want them. He imagines a tired traveller stopping at a petrol station for a hot pie and an “indulgent” oat milk mocha or a fruit caramel latte.
“That’s just perfect. It’s a treat time thing.”
Or he’ll be developing protein coffee drinks for the gym goer or one infused with mushroom extracts for the healthy-minded. Others in the market are playing with coffee, too. Wellington’s Garage Project has used New Ground to help produce Beast Mode, a coffee-tasting stout which has a 12.3 per cent alcohol level and sells for around $20 a bottle. The company has also placed a large order of coffee concentrate for this year’s Beervana festival in Wellington.
Apart from the concentrate and instant coffees, it’s the coffee-in-a-can market that the New Ground founders think will make their $2.5 million production plant go into profit within the next year or two. The assembly line can fill about 10,000 cans an hour and although they’re nowhere near capacity, Marshall predicts it won’t be long.
Canned coffee is a product aimed at Gen Z and Millennials wanting an on-the-go caffeine hit, and already worth billions of dollars in Japan and North America. It’s a range of drinks that scarcely existed in New Zealand three years ago but it’s increasingly showing up on supermarket shelves, and in service station fridges.
The canned coffees are among more than 300 products that come out of New Ground’s plant, some for international food-and-beverage brands that want to add canned coffee to their offerings.
Connor predicts the coffee concentrate will go well in the food-service industry – cafes, bars and restaurants, and places that want to serve coffee but don’t have a barista. Commercial espresso machines are expensive and baristas need training to use them.
“It’s basically an espresso shot-in-a-box without the need for an espresso machine, grinder or even a barista.”
Existing customers are using the concentrate not only to make hot-brew coffees (using a milk frother) but to make tiramisu, martinis, coffee cocktails and iced coffees. A large order of the coffee concentrate has just gone to global tea and coffee suppliers Taylors of Harrogate in the UK.
New Ground’s freeze-dried coffee process is already recognised by top overseas coffee roasters. Marshall, Nestor and Jenner call the fine, instant coffee powder “diamond dust” because the oils make the powder sparkle.
They’re working with renowned coffee farmer Jamison Savage from Panama who grows some of the most expensive coffee in the world under the Savage Coffees brand.
Savage is developing an online direct-to-consumer range which includes freeze-dried instant coffee using Savage Coffees’ beans but New Ground’s technology.
Jenner’s proud that a grower like Savage, who could use any production house in the world, trusts New Ground in New Zealand to turn his coffee into a freeze-dried product. The end cup of coffee won’t be cheap, with each sachet (in a box of five) selling for between US$10 and US$15.
“He’ll have no trouble moving it because of the reputation he has within the industry,” Jenner says.
And New Ground is working with a company in Colorado that is supplying instant coffee to an adventure and outdoors chain of 100 stores across the US.
“Bringing quality to the campsite,” Jenner quips. He argues it probably tastes better than made from scratch.
“You need fresh coffee, clean equipment, a set of scales and someone who knows what they’re doing. Whereas we’ve done all that.”
Cold-brew coffee was pioneered decades ago by Japanese coffee conglomerate UCC and beverage company Suntory, launching into the Japanese market – the vending machine capital of the world – and spreading to North America. Starbucks reported last year that cold drinks now presented 76 per cent of their sales across the US, boosted by Covid when people began buying RTD coffee products at drive-throughs and supermarkets.
Canned coffee has been slower to take off in New Zealand so New Ground is eyeing the nearly $1 billion Australian coffee milk market, and a growing market in the UAE, Asia and the UK.
In pride of place in the New Ground factory is an engineering feat, a high-pressure NGT extraction system that Marshall describes as “an espresso machine on steroids”. The system means 60kg of coffee can be processed in an hour, with quality control maintained over every stage, resulting in a high-end product. The end products, canned coffee, instant and concentrate, will have a shelf life of between 12 to 24 months, unlike coffee beans or grinds which should be used within six weeks.
It’s an offering that will help coffee roasters, all competing for cafe customers, to get into new markets, targeting a young demographic buying drinks in retail outlets.
Blocking New Ground’s entrance is a 12.2-metre container which, as we leave, is being hoisted onto a huge truck. Inside are 100,000 cans of coffee bound for YouFoodz in Australia. The New Ground partners look very happy about this.
The company is already turning over around $1 million a quarter and Marshall, a partner in Icehouse Ventures, is expecting turnover to rise to $3m a quarter within the next 12 to 18 months based on projected growth.
“At that point,” he says, “this factory is a very profitable machine.”
Jane Phare is a senior Auckland-based business, features and investigations journalist, former assistant editor of NZ Herald and former editor of the Weekend Herald and Viva.
The Government has committed funding to the sector in an effort to support future plans.