Following the cup

Sustainium · Company perspective

It started with an empty cup

In 2016, over a coffee in London, one of our founders, François de Vinols, looked at the plain white cup in his hand and wondered why nobody was putting brands on it. Right there at the table, he and Koorosh Madani turned the question into a plan. Graduate employers would reach the students they most wanted to hire, universities would get their cups free, and coffee outlets would save on every order. Everyone had a reason to say yes, and we didn't let the idea sit on a bookshelf. That year, Cup The Market was born.

We had thought carefully about everyone who would hold one of those cups. We hadn't yet thought about where they would end up.

Then we followed the cups

Running campaigns on university campuses meant handling the cups ourselves, and before long we were pulling them out of general bins and putting them into the right bags. Many plastic-lined paper cups were difficult to recycle in standard paper streams, so we set up dedicated collection bins and offered a donation to charity for every cup that landed in the right one.

The bins filled up. The cups were no easier to recycle. That had been decided long before they reached a bin, when someone chose what they were made of. Advertisers had their own doubts: some didn't want their logo ending up in a bin bag, and a printed cup could never prove its return the way an online ad could. Sustainability was not the reason we started the business. It became fundamental through what we discovered while operating it.

We knew the cup had to change. We didn't yet know what to make instead.

Listening to customers

Our customers answered that for us. They asked for reusable cups, so we made them. One of our first large retail customers wanted its intricate textile designs reproduced on them, down to the detail and finish, and taught us that an alternative is judged on everything the original did. Then the same customer asked something that sounded small: could we do straws too? Plastic straws were about to be restricted, and behind that one question stood foodservice chains and beverage producers facing the same deadline.

We have worked the same way ever since. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we try to understand what customers want and build bespoke wheels for them. Straws brought us much bigger customers, and the first of them was about to find out how fast we could move.

Samples the next day

The day after our first meeting, our samples were on their desk, while the oven was still hot. They could hold them, compare them and decide to give us a test. For a new supplier, moving quickly is one of the fastest ways to earn trust.

Winning the order turned out to be the easy part. Supplying it was the job. We planned supply before the first delivery, matched what we promised the customer with what our suppliers promised us, and shipped by the container, because we would rather supply hot dogs to the whole stadium than sell them one at a time. It is still how we work. And when we don't understand an opportunity, or it's too risky, we say no.

Then the rules changed around us.

Changing shape with the rules

After Brexit, we set up Sustainium in Sweden to keep serving our European customers, under a name with room to grow beyond cups. When the EU decided to restrict single-use plastic portion packs in hotels, restaurants and cafés from 2030, we created Plyra, because some of those formats need entirely new solutions. Today Sustainium, Plyra and Cup The Market work as one system.

Three companies, more products and stricter compliance meant the business had outgrown the way it was run.

The people behind the work

For years, almost everything ran through our two founders. One of the things we are most proud of today is the team that has formed around the business: specialists who bring expertise we did not have, take ownership of their areas and speak plainly, challenging an idea even when it is the founders'. When you work with us, that is who you work with: people who take the time to understand what you are trying to solve, know how a new format has to run on your lines, keep track of the rules coming your way and make sure your supply arrives when you need it. If something goes wrong, they deal with it, often before you notice.

Where we're heading

In the Philippines, one of our founders Koorosh Madani once came across a juice with one of our straws on it, carried there through a customer's own distribution. Today our products reach more than 60 countries that way. We have never been very good at stopping to celebrate; there is always another format, another deadline, another question from a customer. Plastic is being regulated out faster than the system around it can be replaced. Our job is to make that move workable for producers, with packaging that runs on real production lines, holds up under regulation and works in the systems that handle it after use, and with environmental claims grounded in performance, documentation and verifiable evidence.

Packaging for the world after plastic.

Source: Sustainium’s approved company story, October 2026.

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