Unlocking the potential of creativity

Coffee husks are morphed into reusable cups, thanks to the innovations of Huskee, a homegrown business that has gone global.

As the founder of Sydney café Pablo & Rusty’s, Saxon Wright saw far too many unrecyclable takeaway cups headed for landfill every day. At the same time, sourcing coffee beans opened his eyes to the enormous amount of unused by-product. “The more I thought about these problems, the more the two ideas merged,” he says. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could use waste from the coffee farms to solve the takeaway cup problem?”

Five years ago, he and Adrian Chen launched Huskee to make a reusable cup from naturally occurring coffee husks and recyclable polypropylene. “We raised over $100,000 [with the help of a Kickstarter campaign] and quickly realised there were opportunities globally.”

The entrepreneurs sourced the husk and manufactured the cups in China and launched almost simultaneously in Australia, the UK and the US. It was a global company from the outset, which meant it needed a global financial partner. “The American Express® Qantas Business Rewards Card was one of our earliest tools,” says Wright. “Because it has no pre-set spending limit1, we could pay suppliers $20,000 to $30,000 at a time. We had business travel expenses, manufacturing costs and IP registrations all over the world and the Card made looking after those international transactions easy.”

Businesses have up to 51 days to pay for purchases2 on the Card – with that extended time between purchase and payment acting as a buffer against unforeseen expenses and also freeing up cash flow for other costs. “And the fact we could earn Qantas Points3 on purchases made it even more appealing.”

The company, which is growing at around 200 per cent per annum, now makes three million cups a year. Huskee has earned more than 3.5 million Qantas Points through its American Express Qantas Business Rewards Card. By redeeming these Qantas Points for business flights to the coffee farm in China and to connect with major distributors around the world, Wright and Chen have been able to further fuel their business’s rapid expansion.

Another growth driver has been the HuskeeSwap program that allows customers to bring in their used cup and walk out with a fresh one. There are currently more than 1000 participating outlets in Australia, the US, Canada, the UK, France, Sweden and even the Maldives, with new enquiries coming in every day.

“Our goal is to eliminate single-use cups and the more we grow, the more impact we can have,” says Wright. “Businesses can do something really good in the world and be profitable. They’re not mutually exclusive.”