Written for the roaster, the drinks brand or the small investor considering bottling cold brew in Spain, who has to decide which product, with which preservation process, in which pack and for which channel. This is not an extraction manual or a category overview: it is the folder you sign or walk away with, with three archetypes modelled at Spanish 2026 costs, the three preservation routes assessed on their real availability —not just their price— and the working capital tied up sitting inside the NPV.
A decision report, not an overview of the cold coffee category. Every figure comes out of a financial engine whose assumptions are published one by one, and every decisive statement carries its source, its date and the confidence grade we give it, including the gaps that could not be closed.
The project's instinct is usually about the recipe: which coffee, which grind, how many hours of extraction. The report shows that formulation does not decide the outcome of any of the three archetypes. Preservation does: cold brew is a low-acid food that tastes mild, and that contradiction between what it seems and what it is governs the CAPEX, the shelf life you can declare, the pack you can use, the channel you can reach and, ultimately, whether there is a business at all. The microbiological file is complete: pH, water activity, the AESAN (Spanish food safety agency) threshold, spore formers and the Listeria regime that tightened on 1 July 2026.
The use-by date is not your selling time. Between the residual shelf life the channel demands and transit, the effective window is a fraction of the declared shelf life, and the report calculates it route by route with the formula published. The result separates what fits a channel from what does not: one route has a window measured in hours and another a window measured in weeks, and that difference decides which channels are open before price enters the conversation at all.
Chilled untreated, chilled with high pressure processing (HPP), and ambient stable. The report compares them on shelf life, selling window, unit cost and —the column almost nobody publishes— real supplier availability in Spain at small-business scale, with contract processors named and located. Two of the three are closed by access, not by cost, and the report documents why and what it would take to open them.
In-pack high pressure processing requires a pack that is flexible, elastic and waterproof, with minimal headspace. The equipment manufacturer itself publishes that some premium materials simply do not comply. The report brings the pack↔process compatibility table, the alternative architecture that would allow the premium pack and why its cost is not verified, plus the packaging waste regime: which part of the container deposit is a real cost and which part is only cash that comes back.
The sector applies a rate out of habit; the report verifies it against article 91.Uno.1.1º of Law 37/1992 and explains exactly what it depends on —a product condition that many formulations fail without knowing it. The effect on net revenue per unit is not cosmetic and is quantified in the model. With it come the legal classification (the royal decree usually cited has been repealed), the RGSEAA notification, the legal name of the product, the caffeine warning and the deposit return scheme timetable.
Manufacturing without a plant looks cheap because the CAPEX is zero. But whoever manufactures through a third party does not choose how much they produce: they produce the minimum batch the co-packer imposes, pay for it up front and take the whole of it into their cold store, with an expiry clock running from the moment it is unloaded. The report crosses that minimum order quantity with the shelf life and the commercial ramp-up, and shows why a model that leaves it out of the discounted cash flow rewards precisely the archetype that takes the most risk.
The report includes the case against itself: seven errors it carried inside, how an independent review caught them and what each correction changed —including a change of verdict. And it explains why the automated validators went green while the report recommended something physically impossible: they check internal consistency, not technical truth. It also publishes the seven gaps that could not be closed, with their effect on the verdict and which call or quotation closes each one.
Download a free sample with the cover and the full table of contents of the report.
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 roaster with their own channel, the drinks brand without a plant, or the small investor assessing whether to bottle cold brew in Spain and wanting to know whether the project recovers the capital. It is not an extraction manual or a course on brewing profiles: it is an industrial and financial decision report. Each of the three archetypes has its own verdict, its own break-even and its own roadmap.
The roaster who bottles and sells through their own channel; the brand without a plant that manufactures through a co-packer for the chilled retail shelf; and the 3-litre bag-in-box concentrate for the hospitality trade. All three are modelled with the same financial engine, at Spanish 2026 costs and at the same discount rate, so that their results are comparable with one another. Each declares its own product, format and volume: concentrate and ready-to-drink are never compared in different units.
It gives a verdict per archetype, with the figure in front of you, and it distinguishes three states that are not the same thing: the one that pays back the capital, the one that does not, and the one that simply cannot be set up even though it makes money in the year. The report does not sweeten anything: when an operation is not executable, the engine refuses to publish an NPV and explains why publishing one would be misleading. It also states what would turn each provisional verdict into a firm one.
It includes the recalculable model in CSV and JSON —assumptions and results— plus the traceability register with the 91 figures it uses, each with its value, its unit, its source, its consultation date and its confidence grade. The sensitivity matrix tells you which variables really move the verdict and over what realistic range they have to be moved, and the seven unverified gaps are published as such, with the effect closing them would have.
Yes, and that is probably the reader who gets most out of it. The archetype of the roaster who bottles starts from the premise that the channel already exists, and the report tells you what you have to add to a working production unit: process equipment, a filling and capping line, a cold store, the applicable RGSEAA code, the self-monitoring and batch release plan, and the recurring laboratory work that supports the shelf life you declare. It also calculates from how many litres a year producing in-house beats putting it out to contract.
Scope Spain, with 2026 data and prices. It covers the Listeria regime that tightened on 1 July 2026, the timetable of the container deposit and return scheme, the VAT rate verified against article 91.Uno.1.1º of Law 37/1992, and the legal classification that applies now that the rule the sector still cites has been repealed. The sources carry their consultation date in the traceability register, so that you can check what may have changed since.
A 120-page PDF, for immediate download after purchase, with a single licence, plus the model in CSV and JSON. Available in Spanish, English, German and French. You can see the cover and the full table of contents in the free sample before deciding.
Three archetypes with a verdict, the three preservation routes with their real availability in Spain, the selling window against the use-by date, the physical compatibility between pack and process, the legal framework verified article by article, and the model delivered in CSV and JSON so you can redo the arithmetic with your own assumptions.
Buy the report · €3,499