Chinese Firm Set to Acquire Italy’s Iconic Moka Coffee Maker Bialetti

January 26, 2025

The rise of capsule coffee machines has significantly impacted Bialetti, the iconic Italian manufacturer of stove-top moka pots, leading to mounting debt and the search for a buyer. Now, a deal is reportedly in the works with Nuo Capital, a part Chinese-owned investment firm, according to Italian media reports.

Bialetti has faced financial challenges in recent years, struggling with increased competition from alternative moka pot manufacturers and the lingering effects of pandemic-related store closures. The company’s debt has risen to €90.3 million, up from €78.2 million in 2018, despite generating revenues of €104.7 million last year—a 6% increase that has not been enough to stabilize its finances. Since 2023, Bialetti has been seeking new ownership to secure its future.

Nuo Capital, founded by Stephen Cheng, managing director of Hong Kong-based World Wide Investment Company (WWIC), is expected to acquire Bialetti and lead its expansion into international markets, enhance ecommerce capabilities, and increase marketing investments.

In recent years, Chinese investors have actively acquired stakes in several Italian companies, including tire manufacturer Pirelli, energy firms Terna and Snam, and luxury yacht maker Ferretti. Despite political tensions between Italy and China—exacerbated by Italy’s withdrawal from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and disputes over electric vehicles—investors remain interested in Italian assets.

Bialetti has been producing its signature Moka Express model since its invention in 1933 when Alfonso Bialetti, an aluminum metal worker, bought the patent for the moka pot. The company, headquartered in Coccaglio, near Brescia in northern Italy, remains a dominant force in the coffee industry, selling an estimated two million moka pots each year.

Despite its historical success, the company has struggled to maintain sales as more consumers opt for electric coffee pod machines. A study conducted fourteen years ago estimated that 90% of Italian households owned a Bialetti moka pot, but in recent years, sales have declined due to the growing popularity of coffee capsules. Market research firm Competitive Data found that profits in the coffee capsule sector grew by 63% last year alone.

Political analyst Guido Alberto Casanova from the Milan-based think tank ISPI noted that while Italy’s stance on Chinese electric vehicle imports may have created tensions, Nuo Capital’s interest in Bialetti suggests that Chinese investors remain confident in the Italian market.

Nuo Capital, which focuses on investments in medium-sized Italian companies, also holds stakes in luxury chocolate brand Venchi and technology company Bending Spoons. The firm is jointly owned by WWIC and Exor, the Netherlands-based holding company of Italy’s influential Agnelli family.

Following news of the potential investment, Bialetti’s shares rose 3.5% in Milan on Friday. While Nuo Capital has declined to comment on the reports, Bialetti has yet to respond to inquiries from The Times.

February 13, 2025

What makes coffee so special?

With each sip, coffee takes you on a journey through time and space, awakening your senses and invigorating your spirit. It's not just a beverage; it's a passport to different lands and traditions, a key to unlocking new perspectives and connections.

How can you embrace the coffee adventure?

Step out of your comfort zone and explore the diverse world of coffee. Try different brewing methods, sample beans from various regions, and immerse yourself in the rituals and stories that accompany each cup. Challenge your taste buds and expand your horizons with each new blend.

Why should you join the coffee revolution?

Coffee is more than just a drink; it's a lifestyle, a culture, a way of life. By embracing the coffee adventure, you open yourself up to a world of possibilities and experiences. You become part of a global community united by a love for the bold and the flavorful, the adventurous and the inspiring.

So, are you ready to embark on this coffee journey? Grab your mug, take a sip, and let the rich aroma of coffee transport you to new heights of taste and discovery. The world of coffee awaits, full of bold flavors and exciting experiences. Cheers to the coffee adventure!

The Aromatic Journey of Coffee: From Bean to Brew

The Brew Theory of Pour Over Coffee

Why is it so tricky to brew a great pour over coffee? After all, at its heart, making a pour over is a simple process—pouring hot water over ground coffee dissolves flavor and aromatic compounds in the beans. The challenge lies in dissolving only the right kinds of compounds in coffee—and in the right proportion. To make a perfect pour over coffee is to find a coffee’s “sweet spot,” a balance of the extraction percentage and strength level we consider most delicious.

Coffee Strength and Extraction

When it comes to understanding strength and extraction, we find it helpful to compare coffee to a spice cupboard. Much in the same way spices are stowed away in a cupboard, an array of delicious flavors—aka volatile and soluble compounds—are locked inside roasted coffee beans. To be exact, coffee contains on average 30 percent soluble compounds and 70 percent insoluble compounds. But like any cook’s cupboard, it also contains a handful of flavors we don’t want—or want only in limited quantities—particularly bitter compounds that impart flavors of ash, tobacco, or carbon. What’s so fun about making a pour over coffee is how much control it gives you in pulling out exactly the right flavors at exactly the right ratio. It’s the Michelin-starred chef of coffee brew methods.

Coffee Strength

The concentration or intensity of flavor in a cup is what we refer to as coffee strength. On the palate, a coffee’s strength registers on a spectrum between watery and dense. In scientific terms, it can be measured by the percentage of dissolved coffee to water, a measurement we call the total dissolved solubles, or TDS.

For example, a well-made espresso has a TDS of between 9 and 20 percent coffee to water. By comparison, the more mellow pour over coffee has a much lower TDS of between 1 and 2 percent coffee to 98 to 99 percent water.

Strength is largely influenced by the amount of coffee you brew. In barista terms, this is referred to as the brew ratio or coffee dose. In lay terms, the more coffee you brew, the stronger the cup. At Blue Bottle, to set accurate brew ratios, we use gram scales to measure both our coffee and our water.

And we set individual brew ratios for all our coffees: We prefer our blends slightly stronger, to stand up to milk, so we generally brew them at 30 grams coffee per 350 grams water. We prefer our single origins more nuanced and expressive, so we “turn down the volume” a bit and keep their brew ratio slightly lower, at 22 to 24 grams coffee per 350 grams water.

If this seems like a lot to remember, a good way to assess a coffee’s strength is to judge its body. That is, the weight and feel of the coffee on your tongue. Does the coffee feel light like skim milk or heavy like whipping cream?

Coffee Extraction

Picture a cup of tea: Steep it too little and it will taste like water. Steep it too much and you have tar. Coffee behaves much the same way. Extraction is a measure of the quality of the solubles in coffee, which emerge at different rates the longer you brew. Those rates are influenced by time, temperature, and ratio of ground coffee to water. An underextracted coffee tastes sour. An overextracted cup is overwhelmed with bitter, even burnt flavors.

Ground coffee contains at most about 30 percent soluble compounds; the remaining 70 percent are fiber and other compounds that water cannot penetrate. But if you dissolve all 30 percent, your cup will not taste good. In a properly extracted cup of coffee, only between 18 and 22 percent of the coffee’s solubles have dissolved.

In pour over coffee, extraction is shaped by pour rate and pour patterns. It’s also impacted by grind size. Grind your beans too fine and the water will pass too slowly through the coffee, extracting too many bitter compounds. Grind them too coarse and the water will rush past the best flavor compounds, leaving you with a coffee that tastes only sour, not sweet or radiant. Grind your beans just right, and the optimal flavor compounds will dissolve in the water, leaving the undesirable flavors behind.

If this all seems like a lot to remember, a good way to assess extraction is by the coffee’s finish. Once you’ve finished a cup of coffee, pay attention to whether or not you can still experience its flavors. We often describe finish in terms of duration, how long the taste lingers, and texture, the feel of it in your mouth. Is the finish fleeting or does it linger? Does it feel smooth or rough?

Finding a Pour Over Coffee’s Sweet Spot

The trick to any method of coffee brewing is to hit the sweet spot—to balance a coffee’s strength and extraction percentage to achieve one delicious cup.

Now that you have an understanding of brew theory and the concepts of strength and extraction, we recommend you practice making a pour over coffee, perhaps altering the coffee-to-water ratio to see how flavors can either become more distinct (with more more water) or more opaque and textured, as happens with the addition of more coffee grounds. Notice if you have a preferred strength. Do your preferences depend on the kind of coffee you’re making, whether a lighthearted single origin or a hefty blend?

Play with the extraction quality, too, by honing your pour over coffee skills, from dialing in the grind to pour technique. Somewhere in this quest you’ll start to notice that your coffee becomes more resonant, with every aspect of it coming into clearer focus. Like notes played on a tuned-up piano, individual flavors start to ring, until the entire coffee, from its mouthfeel to its finish, hums like a chord progression.