Dunstable / UK. (wbp) Costa Coffee, Europe’s largest coffee shop chain and part of British Whitbread PLC, announced that it will be building a brand new roastery to support its national and international growth ambitions. The new roastery will be built in Basildon and will operate in conjunction with Costa’s existing roastery in Lambeth, reinforcing Costa’s British heritage and its ongoing commitment to locating its roasting operations in the UK.
Quality coffee is driving customer demand, meaning that Costa’s Lambeth roastery (established by the Costa brothers in 1984) is roasting coffee 24 hours a day, five days a week. Costa has roasted its premium Mocha Italia blend in Lambeth for more than 30 years and the new roastery in Basildon will help to meet expected demand in 2020 and beyond.
Costa will be investing an estimated 36 million GBP in its new site in Basildon, building a state of the art facility to ensure the highest standards of quality are maintained across its two roasteries.
The UK is the hub of Costa’s national and international business. Unprocessed coffee beans from Rainforest Alliance certified growers are shipped from Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Guatemala and Vietnam to Tilbury Docks in Essex, before being transported to Costa’s Lambeth roastery. Costa’s new roastery in Basildon, 14 miles from Tilbury Docks, will be strategically important – enhancing operational efficiency as well as roasting capacity.
Christopher Rogers, Managing Director for Costa, said: «Costa is growing and to meet strong customer demand we need to increase our coffee roasting capacity. Our existing Lambeth site does not have the long-term roasting capacity to cater for our increasing UK and international demand. The solution is to build a second roastery in the London area, which will continue to produce the high quality coffee our customers love in the quantity the business requires».
The new roastery will produce the same Mocha Italia blend created by the Costa Brothers at the Lambeth roastery since 1971. Costa’s current roastery capacity is 11’000 tonnes but the new roastery alone will have the ability to produce 45’000 tonnes – helping to supply the 464 million cups of coffee Costa customers consumed last year.
Costa is projected to grow significantly over the next five years, increasing demand for its coffee. For its full-year results, Costa announced a 17.9 percent lift in sales and a new growth target – boosting Costa system sales from 1.4 billion GBP in 2014/2015 to 2.5 billion GBP in 2020. The new roastery is scheduled to open in early 2017 (Image: Whitbread PLC).
