Innovations
A passion for science and technology infuses the history of illy, contributing to its growth and success
Ever since it was founded, illycaffè has also been a research laboratory, where technological solutions for producing the best espresso have been designed, constructed and patented.
The company’s first fundamental invention dates back to the thirties: coffee pressurization in cans, which immediately allowed coffee to be shipped as far as the south of Italy, preserved and “aged” in tinplate cans.
In 1935, its founder Francesco Illy invented the illetta, the first coffee machine with automatic water dosing and a jet of compressed air - the predecessor of all espresso machines.
With the arrival of Ernesto Illy, a chemistry graduate, in the 50s the family passion for science and technology became strategy and method, with the birth of the internal research laboratory and collaborations with scientific centers and universities.
Other inventions came along, making the world history of espresso: the sorting machine which analyzes the intensity of light reflected from every single bean and removes the defective ones, and the single serve pods, called servings, for preparing espresso at home and in the office.
Today the Research and Development Unit is itself a center of excellent repute for the study of coffee, thanks to its multidisciplinary approach covering agronomy, botany, physics, chemistry, biology, statistics and computer science and thanks to its partnerships with the universities of Trieste, Udine, Florence, Milan, Budapest and Manchester.
The latest comer to illycaffè’s innovations scene is the hyper-espresso coffee-making method. Aroma-wise and with its creamy rich and persistent foam topping an espresso brewed in this way makes for a truly incomparable coffee drinking experience. Such an exquisite result is achieved thanks to a special pod, so designed as to permit a two-step extraction of the espresso, that is by hyper-infusion and emulsion, instead of by the standard percolation method.
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