Lavazza is bringing its espresso tablets to the U.S., aiming to loosen Keurig Dr Pepper’s grip on the single-serve coffee category.

The Italian coffee giant unveiled Tablì last year and launched the new brewing system first in Italy. The tablets, made of compressed ground coffee without a coating, binder or gelatin, can only be used with a Tablì coffee machine made by Lavazza. Each tablet is marked with the words “100% coffee. At launch, the tabs will come in five varieties: espresso, double espresso, decaf espresso, super crema and lungo, or a “long shot” espresso brewed with more water.

“The result that we’ve been able to achieve was through a very complicated industrial process in order to be able to have [the coffee tablet] very compact, to be able to deliver it without destroying it, to have it able to work in a coffee machine,” Lavazza CEO Antonio Baravalle told CNBC.

Tablì is the result of Lavazza’s acquisition of the Italian startup Caffemotive in 2020. The new system took five years of development, more than 15 patents and a new production facility in Gattinara, Italy, to bring it to market.

Its launch in the U.S. comes as the country becomes an increasingly important part of Lavazza’s business. In 2025, the company’s North American turnover — or revenue — jumped 26.9%, according to Lavazza.

“We are strongly investing in the USA because we think it is an important space for us,” Baravalle said, adding that Lavazza aims to eventually have a €1 billion ($1.15 billion) business in the U.S.

“The brand is growing, in terms of equity, extremely well,” Baravalle said. “We’ve spent a lot of money, for us, in the last two years, and we’re going to do that for the next five years.”

More than 130 years after its founding, the Lavazza family still privately owns the Italian company. In 2025, it reported net profit of €92 million on net revenues of €3.9 billion, according to Lavazza’s latest annual report.

In the U.S., it generates more than $100 million in annual dollar sales through retailers like Target and Walmart. For context, Keurig reported annual net sales of $3.99 billion for its U.S. coffee segment in 2025.

The majority of Keurig’s coffee revenue comes from its K-cups. In the U.S., Keurig has dominated the single-serve coffee market for more than a decade, although Nestle’s Nespresso has won over customers in recent years. Keurig holds about half of the total U.S. market share for fresh ground coffee pods, according to data from Euromonitor International. Nespresso holds a roughly 7% share.

Of course, Lavazza sells K-cup pods in the U.S. through a partnership with Keurig.

Baravalle said he does not expect to beat Keurig or Nespresso.

“For us, it’s important to find our own space, but we are talking about two giants, and one of them, we have an important contract with that we are very happy [with],” he said.

In 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the beverage giant with making misleading statements over the recyclability of its pods. Keurig agreed to pay $1.5 million in penalties without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings. The company’s website now reads, “Check locally, not recycled in many communities.”

Nespresso’s aluminum pods are more easily recycled through the brand’s free mail-back service.

As Lavazza launches a potential competitor, Keurig has its own plans for plastic- and aluminum-free coffee pods. This fall, the company plans to launch K-Rounds, which uses a plant-based coating to preserve the ground coffee inside the puck-shaped pod. The innovation is thanks to a multi-year partnership with Delica Switzerland, the maker of the CoffeeB system, which uses plastic-free coffee balls that have gained traction in parts of Europe.

Lavazza will officially launch Tablì in the U.S. in August. A $99.99 bundle that includes the machine, a 60-count variety pack of tabs and a milk frother is available now to pre-order on the company’s website.

In May, Baravalle said the company was still determining its pricing strategy as it conducted consumer research to understand how much coffee drinkers were willing to pay.

“We are also waiting to see how some big, huge competitors will move in the industry, trying to offer something similar,” Baravalle said. “But, for sure, Lavazza has premium positioning, and we’re not going to do something different from that.”

Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly took their GLP-1 pill battle to the preeminent obesity meeting this weekend as they prepare for the next sea change in how patients receive their drugs.

Novo Nordisk on Sunday announced that prescriptions of the Wegovy pill have topped 3 million since it entered the U.S. market about five months ago. The Danish drugmaker’s CEO Mike Doustdar celebrated the milestone, saying in an interview with CNBC that Novo was able to accelerate prescriptions even as Lilly introduced its own GLP-1 pill in April.

“If that’s not acceleration, then I don’t know what is,” Doustdar told CNBC this weekend at the American Diabetes Association’s Scientific Sessions. 

Meanwhile, Lilly CEO Dave Ricks told CNBC that prescriptions of its pill Foundayo are “markedly higher” than the 20,000 that Lilly reported about six weeks ago around its first-quarter earnings release, without giving a specific number. He said the number builds week over week and that Lilly is pleased with the progress. 

The competition for the weight loss pill market is only the latest for the longtime rivals. Signs of that tension were evident throughout the industry event this weekend. Cars drove around advertising Novo’s Wegovy pill, while pictures of Lilly’s Foundayo pill covered some of the floors of the convention center in New Orleans.

And the two companies will soon make their case for their daily pills and their weekly shots to seniors. Starting in July, millions of people with Medicare will be able to access GLP-1 drugs for weight loss for $50 a month. Until now, Medicare beneficiaries have had to pay out of pocket for the obesity drugs, costing them potentially hundreds of dollars a month. Both companies say they’re focused on raising awareness of the program, though they have different pitches.

Doustdar thinks the program could be an opportunity to regain some of the ground Novo’s Wegovy shot has lost to Lilly’s Zepbound. The drugmaker plans to advertise Wegovy’s other health benefits on its label, he said, like the fact that it can decrease the risk of cardiovascular problems like heart attacks and strokes. He said Novo should win with seniors “if common sense is to prevail, and I put myself in their shoes.”

“With the Wegovy high dose, why would you not take a product that has the same efficacy, percentage wise, than my competitor?” he said. “On top of it, you get kidney, liver, heart, stroke protection, let’s say free of charge. I would take it if I was 10 years older.”

Lilly’s pitch to seniors is convenience. The company’s pill Foundayo can be taken at any time of day with food, water and other medicines, whereas Novo’s pill needs to be taken on an empty stomach with little water and requires fasting for 30 minutes afterward.  

“The main thing is, it’s easy,” Ricks said. “This is something that can just go in your daily routine. Most seniors are on many other medications, and they’ve got their pill case, and they use that every day, and this will just fit right into that without any extra thought.”

Ricks said Lilly is working closely with the government to prepare, and he’s confident that Humana, which will process prescription requests, will do a good job. He thinks the program will be popular with seniors and that longer term, the initiative could help prove that obesity care should be “regular health care.” 

“We have to prove that in this pilot and prove cost effectiveness and then kind of reset what we expect from our health insurance, which is obesity care should be health care,” Ricks said. 

Lilly and Novo are trying to increase insurance coverage of GLP-1 drugs for obesity. At least one analysis found the drugs to be cost effective, but employers have balked at paying for them because so many people could be eligible for the treatments and many patients stop them after achieving a weight loss goal. Health insurance company Cigna last week said it would stop covering the medicines for its own employees.

At Lilly, less than 20% of the company’s beneficiaries are using the drugs for weight loss, and people are staying on them, Ricks said. Lilly is conducting an internal study to measure its health costs and outcomes like hospitalization rate, progression to diabetes and cardiovascular events. Lilly plans to publish those results later this year, he said.

While they prepare for Medicare coverage, both companies are trying to introduce more drugs to treat obesity. At the conference this weekend, Lilly presented Phase 3 data for retatrutide, an experimental triple agonist that helped people lose an average of 28% of their body weight when they stayed on the drug. Nearly half of people lost more than 30% of their body weight, an amount that’s similar to bariatric surgery. The drug also helped improve related conditions like knee osteoarthritis and sleep apnea.

Initially, Ricks expects retatrutide to primarily be used to treat people with higher body mass indexes, or BMI. He also sees promise for the second-lowest strength of the drug. It helped people lose an average of 19% of their body weight with fewer side effects than the higher strengths.

One question was whether Lilly would make retatrutide available on its direct-to-consumer sales platform LillyDirect once it’s approved by the Food and Drug Administration because it’s so powerful. Lilly “absolutely” plans to make the drug available there, Ricks said.

For Novo, the next drug on the horizon is called CagriSema. It combines the main ingredient of Wegovy with another molecule called cagrilintide, which mimics another hormone called amylin. The drug’s efficacy has underwhelmed investors since it has showed weight loss that is similar to Lilly’s Zepbound and less than Lilly’s retatrutide. Doustdar thinks the drug’s edge in effectiveness over Wegovy, even if only a few percentage points, is meaningful, and said he’s committed to launching CagriSema. Novo expects an approval decision from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the drug in the fourth quarter of this year.

“If I have to forget about CagriSema, a lot of other products have to be forgotten about as well,” Doustdar said. “I don’t think it should work that way.”

Doustdar took over as chief executive almost one year ago after a major shakeup that led to the departure of the company’s former leader and thousands of employees being laid off. He’s tasked with reinvigorating sales of Wegovy, the company’s pipeline and its stock price. Eventually, he said Novo will be more diversified within the area of cardiometabolic health — like diabetes and obesity — and some of the “adjacencies.”

In the meantime, Doustdar said the early success of the Wegovy pill has helped Novo regain some momentum.

“The pill was a great example of people getting confident that we can do this, that at Novo Nordisk, better days are ahead of them and not just behind,” he said. “So we also have to really make sure that we turn these positive moments that right now we’re in into a longer term trend, so we gain the trust day by day and improve that both internally as well as, of course, externally, and I will work hard to make sure that this continues.”

RIO DE JANEIRO — United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said he doesn’t expect more airline consolidation in the U.S. and he’s not interested in pursuing a merger for his airline after American Airlines rejected the idea of a combination earlier this year.

“United’s not going to do a deal just to do a deal,” Kirby told reporters Sunday on the sidelines of the International Air Transport Association’s annual meeting.

When asked about the wave of consolidation that has brought together Allegiant and Sun Country this year, and Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines in 2024, Kirby said further combination opportunities look unlikely: “There’s nothing,” he said.

“It’s a lot harder,” he said. “I’ve been … one of the primary architects of consolidation in the United States. I’ve been around a lot of these deals. It’s hard, and you shouldn’t do deals that don’t make economic sense.”

Kirby has repeatedly dismissed the idea of buying its new partner, JetBlue Airways.

But earlier this year Kirby discussed the possibility of combining with American, where Kirby used to work, floating the idea to the Trump administration, CNBC previously reported.

Kirby later said in a statement that he had hoped a combined airline would compete with big foreign rivals, though some analysts said the tie-up would face insurmountable regulatory hurdles.

A merger “requires support from everyone,” Kirby told reporters at the IATA conference. “We would need the unions, we’d need the customers, the shareholders, the regulators and the management team.”

He said, however, regarding American’s management team, “we don’t have that, clearly, so we can’t get it done without them.”

Delta Air Lines President Peter Carter similarly told CNBC on Saturday that he doesn’t see a merger or acquisition in Delta’s future. He said the carrier’s longtime strategy has been partnerships and joint ventures, which include those in South Korea, Mexico and Europe.

Because the U.S. domestic air travel market is so mature, international travel is the future, Carter said. He added he wants to take on United, the second most-profitable airline in the U.S., in the lucrative trans-Pacific market.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Airplane engine makers have fallen short of what they promised airlines, major carriers’ CEOs say, a problem vexing an industry that has struggled for years with aircraft shortages and more recently, a doubling of fuel prices.

It’s a paradox: Engine makers dazzled carriers with more fuel-efficient options for new planes from Boeing and Airbus. But production shortfalls and disappointing reliability with those engines are becoming costly problems, CEOs said in interviews at the industry’s largest annual gathering here.

Airline executives said they’re being forced to remove engines and take them for maintenance into crowded shops earlier than expected, which is driving up costs and sucking up the fuel savings they were supposed to get from the engines.

Airline leaders told CNBC this week that travel demand is still strong despite higher fares, so having aircraft on the ground means money left on the table, just as a $100 billion higher fuel bill this year is slashing airline profit prospects.

Alexis von Hoensbroech, CEO of Canada’s WestJet, told CNBC in an interview ahead of the more than 370-airline International Air Transport Association’s annual assembly that the new engines promising fuel savings of around 15% or more compared with earlier models were “engineering marvels.”

“However, as you push the limits, it sometimes comes at the cost of reliability, and what we all are seeing is that those engines have to go into unscheduled maintenance far more frequently than prior engine generations,” he said.

Newer models of aircraft engines burn hotter, allowing them to use less fuel. That’s key since fuel is airlines’ biggest cost after labor. But that can also mean they wear out faster, which can ground planes, though carriers keep some spare engines.

Von Hoensbroech and other airline executives told CNBC that the new the engines have not reached the reliability that airlines need, through there have been improvements.

“That’s a big struggle, because it adds a lot of costs,” he said. “So a lot of the fuel savings are in fact eaten up by unplanned maintenance costs.”

For example, a CFM56 engine made by GE Aerospace and its French partner Safran that powers older Boeing 737s was going for $9.2 million at the start of the year, up 17% since 2019, according to IBA Group. A Pratt & Whitney PW1127 for newer Airbus narrow-body planes was up more than 57% over that time, according to the aviation intelligence and advisory company.

Engine overhaul and maintenance has become a more than $58 billion business.

Willie Walsh, the outgoing director general of IATA, told the conference in Rio de Janeiro that he is “deeply disappointed customers have not dented manufacturer finances,” and pointed to a jump in engine supplier profits.

“My message to the engine [original equipment manufacturers] is simple: Stop gouging us and get back to making great engines that work and that last,” he said. “Allowing these failures to extend into the next decade is totally unacceptable to the customers.”

For its part, GE Aerospace, which makes engines for both Airbus narrow-body A320 planes and Boeing narrow-body and wide-body aircraft, said it has been working on improvements and has also increased output.

“We’ve made significant investments to enhance time-on-wing, reduce cost of ownership, and increase output and we will continue to invest to drive meaningful improvements,” the company said in a statement. “While there is more to do, we are making progress every day to continue to deliver long-term value for our customers.”

GE powers Boeing’s bestselling 737 Max with its CFM joint venture with France’s Safran. Those Leap engines are also options on the Airbus A320 narrow-body planes, with Pratt & Whitney as the other. GE engines also are used on a majority of 787 Dreamliners.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby praised GE for making improvements, but said there are still concerns for the industry.

“The biggest constraint for at least the next five years is going to be lack of engines,” Kirby said.

He pointed to a shortfall of parts like forgings and castings and said when it comes to smoothing out supply, “I don’t really think we’ve started yet.”

Pratt and some of its customers have the added problem of a manufacturing defect from several years ago. The issue forced airlines to ground planes with those engines, which was one of the biggest challenges that hit now-defunct Spirit Airlines. Pratt’s parent, RTX, didn’t immediately comment.

Rolls-Royce, another manufacturer, said it is still working on efficiency. The company said it has invested £1 billion ($1.33 billion) in its Trent engine fleet and a mode that “offers up to triple time on wing, resulting in improved fleet planning and a reduced maintenance burden for customers.”