From today, Amici is going beyond and offering more: how and why.

From today, Amici is going beyond and offering more: how and why.

After 43 years (yes, we began in 1979), Amici has decided to renovate.  

• new blend
• new image
• new management
• new products
• new sustainability

To begin with, the new blend. It consists of nine Arabica origins. Honduras, San Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, India, Brazil, Ethiopia, Colombia and Nicaragua. We worked with our specialists for more than a year to achieve it and are definitely satisfied with the result: when you try it, you'll agree. They are all fine coffees that we succeeded in blending in the right quantities to enable each of the origins to express its particular taste and aroma, to enhance the pleasure and complexity of the blend. 

The new image consists of our new visual on the packages: we have chosen a photograph of a coffee plantation in its greatest splendour and health. It represents our dedication to the excellence of green coffee: I've always said that only a great raw material can yield a great coffee, and you can't make a great coffee by fiddling with it during roasting. The image is supposed to underline that concept: only excellent green coffees for an excellent blend.  

The new management is the new generation: our children (those of Annemarie Illy and myself) Ernesto and Vittoria. We parents built up Amici over the last 43 years and the time has come to "pass the baton". They have spent many of those years learning our secrets and are now ready to give a new impetus to Amici, for which we are very glad.

The new products are primarily a new system with paper pods and new machines for the time being, but we will surprise you with innovations that we are presently working on in our "kitchen" as time goes on.

The new system is called 10 or TEN. It is a paper pod like the one you are familiar with, but it contains almost 10 grams of coffee powder and allows for excellent extraction, much better than any capsule. Even longer coffees, such as Café Crème, benefit hugely from this improvement, and espressos and ristrettos are much fuller and richer.

The new machines are: the Piccola, our new machine for the ESE pod system that you are familiar with, and the Click for the TEN system. By clicking here, you can see La Piccola and the Click. In addition, we will soon have a new machine for the 10 system designed by Luca Trazzi, and we are developing new machines for both systems, ESE and TEN.

The new sustainability consists of two guidelines that we will follow scrupulously: people and environmental compatibility. 

For the Rainforest Alliance label, we have set ourselves the target of producing 100% coffees certified (only partly achieved for now). For the 2021–2022 harvest, as it was not possible to buy 100% of our green coffees of the high quality that we aim for and that are also certified, we have opted for quality, and some origins of the present blend have not yet been certified. But starting with the next harvest, we are already planning to buy only certified coffees of the high quality that we need for our blend: within a year Amici will be 100% certified. That is a promise.

As for environmental compatibility, we have set ourselves the goal of producing only products and packaging with a low environmental impact, if possible compostable. For this reason, we have decided not to make a clone of the Nespresso capsule system, unlike almost all other roasters. That would have been a very attractive market and I must admit at first we even conducted some tests that did yield excellent results.   But then we said to ourselves: we have a new system, TEN, that makes coffee far superior to the clone and is much more environmentally friendly than a clone. Why should we try to find solutions just like all the others when we can do the planet a favour? So we decided to forget that solution and go for the paper pods that make wonderful coffee with a much smaller impact. And henceforth, Amici will continue to develop ever more environmentally friendly products. And that – which is already a fact with ESE and TEN – is also a promise. 

And, still on the subject of sustainability, we are continuing to plant trees in Sekem, Egypt, and in Antoetra, Madagascar, where we have already planted more than 200,000 trees. Since 2021 when we began with Sekem, we have firmly believed that the simplest way to sequester CO2 and create jobs in poorer countries is to plant trees and more trees. Here too we will surprise you, because while Ernesto and Vittoria will lead the new Amici, I, Francesco Illy, have been devoting more and more time and effort to trees: I will keep you informed.