Systems, compatibility, industrial property, materials and shelf life, manufacturing, channel and viability, with an original shelf audit and a reproducible calculation engine.
A decision report, not an overview of the capsule category. Every figure comes out of a financial engine whose 65 assumptions are published one by one, and every decisive statement carries its source, its date and the confidence grade we give it, including the four gaps the report expressly says it does not know.
150 capsule references walked through the catalogue APIs of Mercadona, Dia and Consum on 3 August 2026, with their price per capsule, their format, their system and their brand; plus 102 references from the system owner's direct channel, which is where the top of the range actually sells. The report publishes the full method so you can repeat it, and declares its own limit in every sentence: Carrefour, El Corte Inglés, Alcampo, Eroski and Lidl blocked automated access and fall outside the count. What is asserted is asserted about the chains audited, not about «Spain».
The capsule principle has been in the public domain since 2012, and that gets repeated a lot; what is almost never said is what is still alive on top of it. A structured search of the patent registers located 25 Nestlé titles validated in Spain and in force to 2033-2043, covering specific improvements to the system. The report publishes the subject matter of each one, its expiry date, and which design decisions fall inside and outside their reach. Along with what a dispute really costs: not losing the case, but surviving it.
Regulation (EU) 2025/40 is quoted constantly in this category, and almost always wrongly. The report reads the articles and separates what the rule imposes on a rigid coffee pack from what the sector takes for granted, with the exact date from which it applies —12 February 2028— and which material decision you take today, four years earlier, because the forming tooling is bought now and is not changed afterwards.
The tax treatment the category has been applying rests on a binding ruling whose underlying legislation has ceased to exist. The report reconstructs the chain —what was asked, which rule it was answered under, what happened to that rule, and what still stands— and quantifies the exposure inside the unit economics under both scenarios, so you can see what happens to your margin if the criterion moves.
Five or six grams will hold specialty coffee: that part is settled, and the report cites the technical literature that supports it. What is not settled is the time window. CO₂ degassing and aroma loss run in opposite directions, the residual oxygen at sealing sets the rest, and the twelve to eighteen months you are about to print on the box are months of food safety, not months of flavour. The report works through the difference, with what has been measured and what nobody has ever published.
Nine co-packers verified one by one, with their system, their capacity and their access conditions. None publishes a contract-filling rate: zero out of nine. Rather than estimate the missing number, the report declares it as a gap, publishes the threshold at which the decision changes sign, and gives you the protocol to close it in two phone calls. The alternative —an owned line— is assessed with dosing accuracy as a cost line: the tolerance of the cheap machine is paid for in coffee, capsule by capsule.
Full unit economics with the pack and the coffee weighed separately, and the cascade by channel —grocery multiples, own store, subscription and foodservice— with VAT, retail margin, promotion and working capital applied in the right order and on the right base. It includes the effect of the minimum order quantity applied per reference, which is the point where a range of several origins stops resembling what you had in mind.
How much the format weighs in volume and in value within Spanish coffee, which segments buy it and why, and what blind tasting studies say when they compare very different price tiers. The report brings the published evidence and cross-checks it against the prices it counted on the shelf itself, so that willingness to pay is not an assumption from the brief but a dated data point.
All 65 economic figures come out of a reproducible engine whose assumptions are published in full with their source, their consultation date and their confidence level. The four data points the research could not close are published as declared gaps, with instructions for closing them: the engine throws an error if any section tries to read them as a figure. The report also explains what that decision does to what it publishes and to what it refuses to publish.
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The sample includes the cover and the contents, so you can see the full scope of the report. The analysis, the financial model and the verdicts are in the complete edition.
For the Spanish specialty roaster turning over between €300k and €3m, who already roasts and decides alone whether to launch a capsule of its own. The three routes in front of you are assessed: outsourcing to a co-packer, buying an in-house line, or filling for third parties with that line. It is not a report for a committee with the means to buy a plant: the premise is that you are risking your own money.
That it does not start from a consultancy's projection but from the shelf counted SKU by SKU through catalogue APIs, with the method published so anyone can repeat it and the universe declared in every sentence: it says which chains were audited and which ones blocked access. And that it publishes its own limits: whatever could not be verified appears as a declared gap, not as an estimate dressed up as data.
Yes, in a dedicated chapter and with a structured search of the patent registers, not with the throwaway line that «the patents have expired». It separates the principle in the public domain since 2012 from the 25 titles validated in Spain still in force to 2033-2043, with their subject matter and their dates, and explains which design decisions fall inside and outside their reach, and what a dispute really costs.
Yes, and it is reproducible: all 65 assumptions are published in full with source, date and confidence level, so you can replace the ones you obtain yourself and redo the calculation. It includes unit economics, the price cascade by channel, free cash flow after tax, the break-even price and sensitivities on the variables that move the result most, across three archetypes by three scenarios.
Magnitudes the report expressly says it does not know, instead of filling them with an estimate. There are four. The most relevant: none of the nine co-packers verified one by one publishes its contract-filling rate. Rather than invent the number, the report publishes the threshold at which the decision changes sign, and the protocol for you to close the figure with your own suppliers.
Edition 7, with fieldwork closed on 3 August 2026. The report explicitly identifies the dated regulatory obligations that force a review —Regulation (EU) 2025/40 from 12 February 2028 and the change of tax basis on 12 August 2026— and recommends a review horizon.
Three routes with a verdict, 150 shelf SKUs counted one by one with the universe declared, 25 live patents with their subject matter and their dates, what the PPWR requires of a rigid capsule from 2028, safety shelf life against flavour shelf life, four declared gaps with their closing protocol, and the model delivered in CSV and JSON so you can redo the arithmetic with your own assumptions.
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