The Instant Coffee Revolution That Started in Dubai

It started with a conversation at World of Coffee in Dubai in 2025. DEVEX Verfahrenstechnik — a German process engineering specialist with deep expertise in extraction, evaporation, and drying — had been quietly working on an idea: what if artisan-quality instant coffee could be produced at a fraction of the cost and complexity of conventional industrial plants?

By June 2025, the first successful test had been completed. The results drew immediate interest from several large regional players. What had begun as a concept was rapidly becoming something far more significant — a genuinely new category of instant coffee technology, now available to the market through dph International.

Why instant coffee has always been a game for giants

Producing soluble coffee at industrial scale has, until now, required an investment of between €15 and €50 million — with some traditional plants demanding over $100 million just to get started. Add a five-story facility the size of a football field, high energy demands, and complex utility integrations, and it becomes clear why the instant coffee market has long been dominated by a handful of megabrands.

Regional players and ambitious mid-sized brands have been effectively locked out — not for lack of demand, but because the economics simply did not add up. SOLAR Gold changes that equation entirely.

SOLAR Gold — Soluble. Artisan. Gold.

The name is not accidental. SOLAR stands for Soluble, Artisan, and Remarkable — three ideas that together describe what makes this product genuinely different from any instant coffee on the market today.

At its core, SOLAR Gold combines cold brew extraction technology with DEVEX's new frost-drying method to produce soluble coffee granules with a distinctive golden hue and a flavour profile that closely mirrors freshly brewed coffee. The granules dissolve instantly — even in cold milk at 7°C — with no sediment and no off-taste.

“The flavor is absolutely different. There's massive potential to achieve specialty coffee levels of aroma and taste — more intense and complex than traditional instant coffee. No one has ever made soluble coffee this way.”

The secret lies in the drying process. Conventional freeze-drying requires energy-intensive pre-freezing, large refrigeration rooms, and significant infrastructure. DEVEX's frost-drying method skips all of that. The extracted liquid is applied in a thin layer to a conveyor belt, which then passes through a deep vacuum tunnel at ≤6 mbar — a pressure so low that water boils below 0°C. The product stays cold throughout, preserving aroma compounds that heat would destroy. The result: consistent 2.5–3% moisture content, superior flavour retention, and a 40% reduction in energy use during drying.

The entire production system fits in a 20 × 20 metre room with a 9-metre ceiling. It is compact, modular, and designed to be operated without deep technical expertise. Companies can start at a focused scale, then add capacity and product formats as demand grows.

One platform. Endless product possibilities.

What makes SOLAR Gold commercially compelling beyond the production economics is its versatility. The same platform that produces premium instant coffee granules can — with minimal adaptation — produce cold and hot brew concentrates, liquid coffee concentrates, tea extracts, fruit extracts, herbal extracts, and RTD beverages.

The global instant coffee market stood at USD $269.4 billion in 2024, with the premium and speciality tier growing at over 10% annually — nearly double the overall market rate. The demand for high-quality soluble products is accelerating, and the brands that will capture it are those that can act now.

dph International and DEVEX are bringing this technology to the Middle East, where interest from regional producers following the June 2025 test has been strong. If you are a coffee brand, a private label producer, or an investor exploring soluble coffee, this is a conversation worth having.

dph International GmbH — Cologne, Germany | ATC DMCC — Dubai, UAE | www.dph-industries.com | In partnership with DEVEX Verfahrenstechnik GmbH