Packaging, Not Just a Pretty Face

On the super­mar­ket shelves, on the counter of a café or in the cof­feeshop; from farm to con­sumer, pack­ag­ing is a multi-faceted and involved pro­ce­dure. In this arti­cle, we look at this from cof­fee con­vey­ing to the fin­ished prod­uct, includ­ing food pack­ag­ing. We will look at the best way to store cof­fee as well as brand­ing solu­tions that can con­vey your mes­sage to the consumer.

Coffee Conveyors
When roast­ers expand their oper­a­tions, they should con­sider tech­nolo­gies that meet their grow­ing demands. There are two types of con­vey­ors within the cof­fee roast­ing indus­try: Pneumatics, where air is used to con­vey the cof­fee, and mechan­i­cal, where a device is used to con­vey the cof­fee. A roaster chooses a par­tic­u­lar con­veyor depend­ing on fac­tors includ­ing the type of cof­fee used, per­sonal expe­ri­ence or the phys­i­cal con­straints of the facil­ity. Conveyors require a good amount of energy and labor. The best con­veyor requires the least amount of both.

“Cablevey cable and disk tech­nol­ogy moves cof­fee with­out the use of air,” says Cablevey’s Marketing Manager, Karl Seidel. “This method of con­vey­ing ensures con­sis­tent par­ti­cle blends and opti­mal aroma qual­ity.” Seidel says that get­ting effi­ciency means con­stantly exam­in­ing and improv­ing processes. “Having a con­veyor is a busi­ness deci­sion based on effi­ciency and safety.”

Gentle con­vey­ing is impor­tant to pro­tect the bean as it goes through the con­vey­ing process. Appearance is impor­tant, so a con­vey­ing sys­tem that is effi­cient but does not dam­age the cof­fee is essen­tial. “Customers have told us that gen­tle con­vey­ing and low break­age rates make happy cus­tomers,” says Seidel.

According to Jeff Dudas, CEO of Spiroflow, “some of the main ben­e­fits of automat­ing con­vey­ing are the decrease of labor costs; improve­ment of san­i­tary con­di­tions; dust con­trol; improved effi­ciency; and reduced energy con­sump­tion.” In addi­tion, “Conveyor’s will avoid repet­i­tive stress injuries employ­ees may suf­fer dur­ing the oper­at­ing process.”

Staying Fresh
Fresh, aro­matic cof­fee is essen­tial for roast­ers, which is what a cus­tomer looks for in qual­ity cof­fee. Alma Likic of PLITEK says “in order to pro­vide the fresh­est cof­fee pos­si­ble and pre­serve the qual­ity of their cof­fee, cof­fee roast­ers should pack and seal their cof­fee imme­di­ately after roast­ing in a pack­age that has a one-way degassing valve.”

As freshly roasted cof­fee cools, it releases car­bon diox­ide gas. The degassing process can last up to a week depend­ing on the roast and other fac­tors. Without the proper mech­a­nism in place to release the car­bon diox­ide, degassing cof­fee inside of a sealed pack­age will cause the pack­age to swell and poten­tially burst. Freshly roasted cof­fee can be bulk degassed, how­ever the prob­lem with this approach, in addi­tion to tying up inven­tory and space, is that oxy­gen and air­borne con­t­a­m­i­nants causes cof­fee to rapidly lose its freshness.

The solu­tion is using one-way degassing valves that are placed on the cof­fee pack­ag­ing. The pur­pose of one-way degassing valve is to allow car­bon diox­ide gas from freshly roasted cof­fee to escape from the pack­ag­ing while keep­ing oxy­gen and con­t­a­m­i­nants from com­ing in. These valves are now stan­dard fea­tures on cof­fee bags as well as on lid con­tain­ers, so the prob­lem now is less with includ­ing the valve than with mak­ing sure that the valve func­tions prop­erly. According to Chris Burger of Fres-co, “It is crit­i­cal to under­stand the per­for­mance of the valve selected. Many times a bag can be a leaker directly through the valve.” Ensuring the right valve type for the pack­age size as well as the pack­age mate­r­ial is essen­tial in the suc­cess of cof­fee preservation.

Through a process called Modified Atmospheric Packaging, or Gas Flushing, a roaster can pack­age their cof­fee into an her­met­i­cally sealed cof­fee bag imme­di­ately after roast­ing. The cof­fee bag needs to be of a high bar­rier lam­i­na­tion. In addi­tion, explains Burger, “the cof­fee needs to be blan­keted with an inert gas, typ­i­cally nitro­gen. If all these steps are done cor­rectly, cof­fee shelf life can be extended from 3–12 months.

Likic says, “The appli­ca­tion of the one-way degassing valve is a crit­i­cally impor­tant com­po­nent of cof­fee pack­ag­ing process. PLITEK pro­vides a com­plete sys­tem solu­tion that includes both one-way degassing valves and valve appli­ca­tors engi­neered to inte­grate with the roaster’s new or exist­ing pack­ag­ing machinery.”

Nick Greco of Avery Dennison says that their Flexis tech­nol­ogy has sev­eral advan­tages over con­ven­tional hard valve tech­nol­ogy. “Flexis valves allow for up to 30 per cent increase in appli­ca­tion through­put and a 30–50 per cent prod­uct pur­chase advan­tage over hard valves.”

Pacific Bag, Inc. rec­om­mends using high bar­rier foil with a one-way degassing valve for longer fresh­ness and paper tin ties for retail take away cof­fee. Pacific Bag, Inc. pro­vides steps when choos­ing the right bag:
1.    Is the bag cor­rect size?
2.    Most bags will need to be sealed to pro­tect against oxy­gen and make it tam­per evi­dent.
3.    Stock bags are usu­ally used in con­junc­tion with pres­sure sen­si­tive labels.
The bag’s seal also needs to be con­sid­ered. A faulty seal allows oxy­gen in and neg­a­tively affects the qual­ity of cof­fee. Pacific Bag’s Kelle Vandenburg rec­om­mends a con­sis­tently proper seal, to “check the melt tem­per­a­ture of the sealant layer on your bags. Your bag sup­plier should be able to answer ques­tions for you.” Roasters should also make sure that their seal­ing machine has a con­sis­tent pres­sure across the jaw of the sealer. By fol­low­ing these sim­ple steps roast­ers can make a big dif­fer­ence in the con­sis­tency and qual­ity of their beg seals.

Most com­mon mate­ri­als used in cof­fee bags are poly­ester alu­minum foil and poly­eth­yl­ene. Many roast­ers use a type that allows the end con­sumer to eas­ily open the bag with­out hav­ing to cut open the bag.

Pack Plus Converting makes met­al­ized stand-up pouches. Commonly referred to as a “mylar” bag for its met­al­lized look and light-weight qual­i­ties, they make a great alter­na­tive to foil and clear poly mate­ri­als. Their mod­er­ate bar­rier qual­i­ties make these pouches ideal for pack­ing dry prod­ucts (i.e. trail mix, snacks, treats) or pow­dered mix. Packaging in a met­al­lized pouch is a great way to lower your costs with­out com­pro­mis­ing quality.

Storage
Coffee’s increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity around the world has made it one of the world’s most val­ued com­modi­ties. Tightpac’s Justin Marquis says “this phe­nom­ena has made proper cof­fee stor­age an impor­tant fac­tor, indis­pens­able for main­tain­ing its fresh­ness and fla­vor.” Tightpac’s line of cof­fee and tea stor­age con­tain­ers has a unique patented vac­uum sys­tem that acts as a one-way degassing valve.

Coffee needs sun­light, water and heat to grow. But iron­i­cally, these ele­ments can also be the enemy of the bean, as they con­tribute to short­en­ing the lifes­pan of the cof­fee. Coffee beans need to be pro­tected from light, heat, and mois­ture to stay fresh.

BeanSafe offers a one pound air-tight cof­fee stor­age con­tainer with a one-way degassing valve. Since cof­fee is gen­er­ally sold to con­sumers in one pound bags, it is an ideal acces­sory for any cof­fee con­nois­seur. Alan Alberani of BeanSafe says “cof­fee will nat­u­rally degrade after about two weeks. Storing the cof­fee in a bet­ter con­tainer, espe­cially one that has a valve, will pro­long the life.”

Look and feel is impor­tant
Retailers know that over 70% of pur­chas­ing deci­sions are made at the store shelf.

Coffee pack­ag­ing should com­mu­ni­cate their brand mes­sage, while also pro­vid­ing a prac­ti­cal pack­ag­ing prod­uct. Roasters must con­sider func­tion­al­ity and brand­ing when choos­ing the pack­ag­ing for their cof­fee. According to Mike Mead of Roastar, “Choices in how you pack­age your cof­fee serve to reflect your brand’s val­ues, and can be your biggest asset when it comes to com­mu­ni­cat­ing the brand mes­sage on an ini­tial pur­chase. Roasters must com­pete for crowded retail space. The qual­ity of the pack­ag­ing is key to get­ting noticed and ensur­ing repeat cus­tomers. The look is crit­i­cal. We like to say the look attracts the con­sumer and after that, it’s up to the prod­uct. Fres-co pri­mar­ily uses rotogravure print­ing. This process allows for the high­est level of graph­ics on the cof­fee pack­age. Although the feel is not as impor­tant, the con­sumer does need to feel the bag is sturdy enough to pro­tect the cof­fee and not break open.”

Christian Wipf,  Chairman of the Board and fourth gen­er­a­tion leader at WIPF AG, says “Wipf has been the qual­ity leader in the one-way degassing valve mar­ket for more than 35 years. Our global busi­ness con­tin­ues to expand and we are ded­i­cated cre­at­ing a robust mar­ket for WICOVALVE’s in North America.”  The WICOVALVE is remark­able for it’s 3 year shelf and a max­i­mum 0.01% reject rate and pro­vides a 32% source reduc­tion com­pared other valves. Christian Wipf goes on to say  “The U.S. Market is look­ing for a higher qual­ity, bet­ter per­form­ing and bet­ter value for one-way degassing valves . We believe Wipf is well posi­tioned to meet those expectations.”

Todd Addison adds, “UltraFlex’s wealth of knowl­edge with bar­rier, sealants, resins and addi­tives tech­nol­ogy, plus their unique mix­ture of equip­ment, coating/laminating process and human resources are an ideal model for advanced solu­tions. Ultra Flex com­mands a strong pres­ence in the mul­ti­layer, high bar­rier roll­stock and pouch markets.”

For point of sale snack items such as nuts, pret­zels and health bars, dis­play and con­ve­nience for cus­tomers to access them is a must. Ultra Flex, for instance, pro­vides their clients with high bar­rier struc­tures that will pro­tect prod­ucts and extend shelf life. For them, sus­tain­abil­ity is based on the idea that the qual­ity of people’s lives and the state of our com­mu­ni­ties are affected by eco­nomic, social, and envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors. One of the many ways they keep a sus­tain­able prac­tice is by using 200 HP nat­ural gas com­pres­sors to reduced elec­tric­ity in their plant by 40%.

Branding
Mike Mead of Roastar empha­sizes that “Coffee pack­ag­ing needs to strike a bal­ance between com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the brand mes­sage, while pre­serv­ing and facil­i­tat­ing the use of the prod­uct.” Getting a grasp of what those effi­cien­cies are for your unique brand is what build­ing a busi­ness is all about.

Bag hard­ware is impor­tant, as it plays a cru­cial role for cus­tomers to iden­tify your prod­uct. If you are mar­ket­ing your cof­fee as envi­ron­men­tally friendly, bet­ter brand­ing might be achieved by using recy­cled paper bags or com­postable bags over stan­dard plas­tic or foil.

With the con­tin­ual devel­op­ments in the pack­ag­ing mar­ket, cof­fee roast­ers and retail­ers would be wise to edu­cate them­selves on the pack­ag­ing options avail­able to them. For the roaster, pack­ag­ing equi­ment is going to vary immensely depend­ing on the siye of the roaster. Small roast­ers often fill bags by hand whereas huge roast­ers typ­i­cally have com­pletely auto­mated pack­ag­ing systems.

When choos­ing the pack­ag­ing for your cof­fee there are two con­sid­er­a­tions: func­tion­al­ity and brand­ing. Functionality will have less of an impact on sales than brand­ing; it may be less com­pli­cated, but every retailer must meet it with finesse. Nonfunctioning pack­ag­ing can stump your abil­ity to deliver a qual­ity product.

Fres-co pro­vides Corner Seal, allow­ing the four cor­ners of the bag to be stiff­ened allow­ing the bag to bet­ter keep its shape through­out dis­tri­b­u­tion and on the store shelf. It almost gives the bag a 3D affect.

Avery Dennisons func­tional pressure-sensitive adhe­sive label and pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als enhance shelf-appeal of food, bev­er­ages, health, and beauty prod­ucts while pro­vid­ing con­sumers with impor­tant information.

For the past 25 years, PBI has pro­vided cus­tom printed pre­made pack­ages and roll­stock to thou­sands of sat­is­fied cus­tomers. From the ear­li­est phases of the design stage, up and through for­mal pro­duc­tion, PBI’s knowl­edge and exper­tise of the process help keep things simple.

“It’s very impor­tant that cof­fee prod­ucts present well on a retail shelf and offers the con­sumer the best oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence a qual­ity prod­uct in their home set­ting,” adds Patrick McCarthy of Taipak. “Our Flexi Box pack­ag­ing deliv­ers a flat bot­tom cof­fee bag that sits well on any shelf and our E Zip open­ings deliv­ery an air tight solu­tion to ensure that cof­fee stays as fresh as pos­si­ble after the ini­tial open­ing.  An air tight re-sealable zip­per is sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter than a tra­di­tional tin tie or re-sealable tap in help­ing to retain as much of the bean fresh­ness as pos­si­ble and enhanc­ing the con­sumers over­all expe­ri­ence of your cof­fee products.”

Retailers and man­u­fac­tures should be aware that cus­tom pack­ag­ing offers them the abil­ity to reduce costs sig­nif­i­cantly in their pro­duc­tion process.  In many cases the rea­son for not adopt­ing a cus­tom pack­ag­ing strat­egy is based on the mis­con­cep­tion that it is too expen­sive.    In real­ity this is not the case and for approx­i­mately $5000 you can imple­ment a cus­tom pack­ag­ing solu­tion today.  Not only will this reduce your pro­duc­tion costs, but it will also ele­vate your brand and mar­ket footprint.

With all of these options for pack­ag­ing cof­fee, one thing is cer­tain: pack­ag­ing is com­pli­cated. Fortunately, pack­ag­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers and sup­pli­ers can help guide you through the process and work with you to select the pack­ag­ing that makes the most sense for you.

Mother Parkers Innovates With New Coffee Degassing Valve

The largest pri­vate label cof­fee roast­ing com­pany in North America is upgrad­ing its degassing process for flex­i­ble pack­aged cof­fee with a new degassing valve that con­tributes to prod­uct fresh­ness, elim­i­nates a step in the pack­ag­ing process and is help­ing to gen­er­ate sav­ings and increased effi­cien­cies dur­ing its first two stages of implementation.

The com­pany is Mississauga-based Mother Parkers Tea and Coffee, whose pas­sion for inno­va­tion has helped make the family-owned busi­ness the cof­fee sup­plier of choice to some of the world’s largest retail­ers and food ser­vice providers. Indeed, the motto that under­scores the company’s logo—“A Better Beverage Experience”—is derived from a his­tory of inno­va­tion that now spans over a century.

Recently, a drive to improve the pack­ag­ing process at Mother Parkers’ sprawl­ing Fort Worth, Texas man­u­fac­tur­ing plant led to the test­ing and adop­tion of the Avery Dennison Flexis® Coffee Pre-oiled valve, one of the most sig­nif­i­cant degassing valve inno­va­tions in the cof­fee indus­try in the past decade.

“We found through our inter­nal test­ing that the valve was less prone to fail­ure than our exist­ing flex­i­ble valves,” says Kelly Harber, the plant’s Maintenance/Manufacturing Projects Manager.

The test­ing was a six-month process that eval­u­ated the new valve against the plant’s exist­ing flex­i­ble and heat seal-applied hard but­ton valves. Tests cov­ered O2 resis­tance, extended shelf life per­for­mance, adhe­sion, and dispensability.

The tests were con­ducted on Accraply valve appli­ca­tor sys­tems equipped with an Avery Dennison ALS 204 dis­pens­ing head. The Flexis valve per­formed with lit­tle to no fail­ures or leak­age. In addi­tion to run­ning faster and degassing with greater effi­ciency than the exist­ing degassing valves, the pre-oiled Flexis valves also made for a cleaner run­ning and more effi­cient pack­ag­ing operation.

“The pre-oiled fea­ture elim­i­nates a step in the pack­ag­ing oper­a­tion,” Harber explains. ”The pre­vi­ous flex­i­ble valves required us to apply oil dur­ing the valve appli­ca­tion process. This entailed keep­ing inven­tory of oil and keep­ing our equip­ment cal­i­brated for dis­pens­ing the cor­rect amount onto an exact valve loca­tion. The Flexis valve is pre-oiled with food-grade sil­i­cone oil when it is man­u­fac­tured. “Plus, the pre-oiled valve makes for a cleaner run­ning appli­ca­tor and pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ment because there’s no need for online oil application.”

The Flexis Coffee Pre-oiled Valve
“According to Bill Hartman, the Avery Dennison busi­ness devel­op­ment man­ager who worked with Harber on the con­ver­sion to Flexis, valve degassing has been an over­looked effi­ciency oppor­tu­nity. “Innovative busi­nesses like Mother Parkers are now cap­i­tal­iz­ing on a rel­a­tively sim­ple process improve­ment. The new valve offers fresh­ness, pack­ag­ing and cost effi­ciency advan­tages com­pared to other types of valves. It’s also often a pre­ferred alter­na­tive to bin degassing, which involves a major cap­i­tal out­lay and can take 8–24 hours or longer to com­plete, tying up inven­tory and rob­bing the cof­fee of freshness.”

“The one-way valve per­mits us to pack­age straight into a bag,” adds Harber. “If you don’t have a valve, the cof­fee will degas and the bags will bal­loon. One-way valves con­tribute to fresh­ness by let­ting gas out and not let­ting oxy­gen in. All cof­fee valves are one-way, but some per­form bet­ter than others.”

The new Flexis valve has a tri-layered con­struc­tion that allows the escape of CO2 while inhibit­ing the entry of O2. As pack­aged beans degas CO2 pres­sure builds and then enters and escapes through the top baf­fle layer. Once degassing is com­plete, the valve re-seals to pre­vent oxy­gen from re-entering the cof­fee pack­age. The con­struc­tion gen­er­ally keeps resid­ual oxy­gen at two per­cent or less, a fig­ure that equals indus­try standards.

Throughput
Mother Parkers’ pre­vi­ous valve pack­ag­ing speed was 55 valves per minute with the old flex­i­ble valves and 45 valves per minute with hard but­ton valves.

“Stage one of our con­ver­sion to Flexis involved ramp­ing up on the new Accraply machines,” Harber says. “The tran­si­tion, once test­ing and qual­i­fi­ca­tion runs where cer­ti­fied, only took a day. The imple­men­ta­tion
of stage two went seam­lessly as well.”

Flexis Coffee valves can be applied using Accraply label­ing sys­tems at speeds more than 30% faster than heat seal-applied hard but­ton degassing valves. That capa­bil­ity of through­put means fresher cof­fee and higher order fill rates for their customers.

& Fertilizer.">The Natural State of Coffee — A Contemplation of Grounds, Leaves & Fertilizer.

I’m get­ting older. I paid $1.25 for a “nickel” Hershey Bar the other day. Things change. On the other hand, the $4.50 latte appears to be here to stay. Even in these hard times con­sumers, par­tic­u­larly the young, have deter­mined that they are will­ing to reach into their pock­ets for a bev­er­age that brings them joy. That too, is a har­bin­ger of good things to come for the roast­ing retailer and inde­pen­dent roaster, for our future is cheek-by-jowl linked to the con­sumers’ inter­est in the goods we make and sell. The econ­omy is still rough, and I keep find­ing myself remem­ber­ing my Dad talk­ing about the cof­fee busi­ness dur­ing the Great Depression when cof­fee sold for 25¢ a pound; 5¢ cup. The plain old nickel cup from the cor­ner news stand is now a buck. The Old Man would have found that funny.

A 36% decline in green cof­fee prices over the last 12 months has buoyed the spir­its of small inde­pen­dent roast­ers as the cost of raw goods has come back to earth, and accounts payables have come out of the stratos­phere to more man­age­able lev­els. As I write, the Exchange price for March 2013 is hov­er­ing at lev­els that most farm­ers and most roast­ers can accept as liv­able. The free flow of cash from inven­tory per­mits invest­ment in equip­ment, new prod­ucts, adver­tis­ing and per­son­nel that was unthink­able dur­ing the last 2 ½ years. It is a well-met asset thaw that bodes well for the future of the community.

There are new roast­ing busi­nesses in every nook and cranny of the coun­try. Recently an old cof­fee cur­mud­geon of my acquain­tance men­tioned that if you turn over a rock with your shoe there is a decent chance you will find a new roaster beneath it. There are many new entrants for sure, and this is a good and healthy thing. It indi­cates that there are folks who have the faith, nascent abil­ity, ded­i­ca­tion, and strength of pur­pose to make a place for them­selves in cof­fee. Where there is new blood, there is hope for the future of this stuff we love.

More and more tech­nol­ogy is creep­ing into the roast­ery. The roast­ing man is seen more and more often check­ing the progress of his roast on his iPad. Environmental man­age­ment of roast­ing bi-product appears to be taken seri­ously by a grow­ing num­ber of small roast­ers who have felt ambiva­lent in the past about the smoke, ash, and smells that are the byprod­uct of cof­fee roast­ing. This is as much a result of peer pres­sure, and con­sumer inter­ests as it is the result of munic­i­pal codes. It is good busi­ness to run a clean, envi­ron­men­tally sen­si­tive busi­ness, and we are learn­ing that year-by-year, which is a good thing.

Espresso is an every­day thing in most parts of the USA now, and it is a rare roaster that does not blend and roast at least one item for espresso use. In an inter­est­ing devel­op­ment Robusta, shunned twenty years ago by any spe­cialty roaster worth his salt, has a grow­ing accep­tance now in Italian style espresso blends. Interestingly, the American style espres­sos are iden­ti­fied with pure Arabica blends. There was some talk a while back about the accep­tance of Robusta beans as spe­cialty cof­fee. That con­ver­sa­tion will con­tinue, and prob­a­bly get louder.

The mar­ket­ing of envi­ron­men­tal sen­si­tiv­ity is seen in the choices many roast­ers are tak­ing in the way they present them­selves to their cus­tomers. Kraft paper and hand-crafted look­ing lam­i­nated valve bags and pack­ing mate­r­ial has grown in use, as it gives the impres­sion of cor­po­rate envi­ron­men­tal sen­si­tiv­ity, small com­pany hand-crafted goods, and down-home neigh­bor­li­ness. Many of these efforts are suc­cess­ful. Sadly, few are more than window-dressing to improve the pub­lic accep­tance of goods offered for sale. Still, aware­ness of the public’s desire to seek out the goods of envi­ron­men­tally sen­si­tive busi­nesses is a big step away from a cal­lus profit-driven inter­est and toward a higher plane of cof­fee consciousness.

The devel­op­ment of green cof­fee extract as an ingre­di­ent in food sup­ple­ments and bev­er­ages will be of con­tin­u­ing inter­est. This phe­nom­e­non of a weight loss ingre­di­ent hit the weight watch­ing scene back in April, when Dr. Oz intro­duced mil­lions of view­ers to it on his tele­vi­sion show. Green cof­fee bean extract, which seems to be pri­mar­ily chloro­genic acid and caf­feine, is now being mar­keted as a dietary sup­ple­ment by many food sup­ple­ment and nat­ural vit­a­min com­pa­nies. So far Starbucks is the only promi­nent roaster to have added cof­fee bean extract to its prod­uct mix. It is an ingre­di­ent in Starbucks’ new Refreshers bev­er­ages and in com­pli­men­tary VIA instant bev­er­age packets.

Roasters will be watch­ing more than their shades this com­ing year. Leaves are much on their minds also since Starbucks, owner of the Tazo tea brand since 1998, has opened a Tazo tea store in Seattle’s University Village shop­ping area. They fol­lowed this con­cept store with the announce­ment that Starbucks will acquire Teavana, Teavana’s 300 small shops spe­cial­ize in tea leafs, tea bev­er­ages, and tea acces­sories. The chain, sprin­kled in mostly mall loca­tions through­out much of the coun­try, expected to make $220–230 mil­lion dol­lars this fis­cal year. Nobody’s bet­ting like Mitt Romney on this, but my nickel is on Teavana out­lets becom­ing Tazo-branded stores before long. Some roast­ers have been offer­ing loose teas for years, while oth­ers offer only tea bags to their whole­sale cus­tomers. It is a fair guess that we are all going to be more inter­ested in teas of every type and descrip­tion in the com­ing year than we have been in the past year.

Among the rare and exotic items that may find its way into North American blends this year is Kopi Luwak, the ster­co­ra­ceous Indonesian cof­fee del­i­cacy that has been imi­tated in Peru and Vietnam after pro­duc­tion was juiced in recent years since being fea­tured in the 2007 film The Bucket List. The Indonesian item has taken a pub­lic rela­tions hit from the UK news­pa­per The Guardian, which reported on alle­ga­tions of ani­mal rights abuses at civet farms in Indonesia. Likewise, the Associated Press has made us aware of Thailand’s Black Ivory cof­fee (cul­ti­vated from ele­phant dung) that hits the fan this year. At $500 a pound, this exotic adds con­sid­er­ably to the avail­able vol­ume of this type of item which may put down­ward pres­sure on the pound price of this class of goods. I have not cupped Black Ivory, but I have pon­dered if it is good to the last dropping.

Author and Roaster’s Guild founder, Donald Schoenholt, is said to have an unerr­ing sense of cof­fee, cof­fee his­tory, and cof­fee continuity—but no sense of humor. He will deny this. He believes he is quite droll. Mr. S., cel­e­brat­ing his 50^th anniver­sary in cof­fee, can be found round the roast­ing room at
www.gilliescoffee.com.

OCS Legend">What it Takes — Lessons from an OCS Legend

Fred Steiner, Winner NAMA 2012 Coffee Legends Arward

When I was grow­ing up the pop­u­lar meet­ing spot was the local bar or restau­rant, today it’s the cof­fee shop, with one on every cor­ner and in fact, some­times two or three. Years ago, I remem­ber hear­ing that cof­fee might be bad for you, today we hear that we should drink more because it may in fact help many health con­di­tions. One thing is for sure, we know it is a mild diuretic and although unproven, a friend told me that it is a sex­ual stim­u­lant in rats! Wow, are we the “in” prod­uct today.

I began in the OCS busi­ness on June 1^st 1974. At the time my cof­fee kit had 42 pack­ages of 2 ½ ounce cof­fee and con­tained 2 x 1lb. pow­dered creamer plus 2 x 1 lb. gran­u­lated sugar and sold for $25.00. A dou­ble kit of 84 pack­ets was offered at a 10% dis­count, thus pric­ing was $45.00 and included 4 x 1lb. pow­dered creamer and 3 x 1lb. gran­u­lated sugar. It didn’t take long before we iso­lated the creamer and sugar and removed it from our ‘cof­fee kit’. For one thing, cus­tomers were being stock­piled on these prod­ucts and sec­ondly if sugar or creamer was on the rise, we would be forced to raise the entire cof­fee kit price, even though cof­fee itself had not increased. The per­cep­tion we wanted to guard against was that we were increas­ing cof­fee prices when in fact we weren’t. Once removed from the cof­fee kit, we devel­oped a creamer and sugar pack­age con­sist­ing of two bags of pow­dered creamer and 2 bags of sugar which sold for $4.25 or four cream­ers and 3 bags of sugar for $7.50.

Of our total sales, 75% were cof­fee and 25% were allied prod­ucts. At the time, allied prod­ucts con­sisted of six prod­ucts: pow­dered creamer, sugar, stir sticks, Styrofoam cups, tea and hot choco­late. Our tar­geted gross profit mar­gin was 60% +.Today my cof­fee sales and total allied prod­ucts are split about 50/50 and we have over 600 SKU’s in allied prod­ucts alone.

In those good old days, for every three accounts we opened, one might have come from a com­peti­tor and two were vir­gin accounts where we were sell­ing the con­cept of OCS to the unin­formed. Today, for every three accounts we open, all three come from competitors.

Back in 1974 my biggest com­peti­tor was my ex sales­man. Machines were inex­pen­sive and a sup­plier would always take a chance by extend­ing a bit of credit to the new oper­a­tor whose garage or base­ment became their ware­house and office. With today’s cus­tomer sophis­ti­ca­tion, and the fact that they are cur­rently on their 3^rd, 4^th, or 10^th office cof­fee sup­plier we need to spend far more on equip­ment which elim­i­nated easy and inex­pen­sive entry into our indus­try. Today some of our com­peti­tors include ware­house clubs, office sup­ply houses and of course, the mul­ti­tude of cof­fee shops on every cor­ner, all vying for the abil­ity to pro­vide cof­fee to the same person.

There were a few sig­nif­i­cant events along the way which I look back on, as being respon­si­ble for shap­ing my phi­los­o­phy in the build­ing of our busi­ness. Shortly after I started in busi­ness, the Mr. Coffee home brewer from North American Systems made its debut with Joe Dimaggio flog­ging it on every TV sta­tion I watched. “That was it”; I hon­estly thought the OCS busi­ness was all but over as a small pour-over machine was now read­ily avail­able to our cus­tomers and cof­fee and fil­ters were avail­able in every super­mar­ket. I was wrong; we not only sur­vived, but flour­ished, because we under­stood that our busi­ness was to pro­vide a ser­vice not just cof­fee as a commodity.

Then in July 18, 1975 a major frost hit Brazil and a pro­jected car­ry­over of 12 mil­lion bags of cof­fee became a pro­jected short­age of sev­eral mil­lion bags. The price of cof­fee soared to lev­els never before seen on world cof­fee mar­kets. We faced the task of rais­ing prices sig­nif­i­cantly and often. Those that under­stood they could not be timid sur­vived, and the rest I ulti­mately bought out.

Into the 1980’s as frosts cre­ated wilder price swings, roast­ers became more cre­ative and ground their cof­fees finer and roasted them darker allow­ing the oper­a­tor to remove frac­tions of the bag and still achieve a sim­i­lar taste. In fact, this became the fore­run­ner of ‘Hi-Yield’ cof­fees and oper­a­tors in every mar­ket were offer­ing as low as 1.1 oz. ‘hi yield cof­fees’. Again, any OCS oper­a­tor who thought they could build a busi­ness on hi yield cof­fee soon learned a big les­son by ignor­ing qual­ity. In fact those thou­sands of cof­fee shops I men­tioned ear­lier actu­ally became an ally of the good OCS oper­a­tor as they edu­cated the pub­lic about a qual­ity cup of coffee.

During those early years I ques­tioned if this was really a sus­tain­able busi­ness.
I won­dered more than once if this could become an indus­try or was just a fad which would ulti­mately fade. Then a funny thing hap­pened; I became a believer one night while watch­ing a TV show. It was a police type of show and there was a scene in an office and one of the detec­tives went for a cup of cof­fee from the cof­fee machine on the counter and I thought to myself that I had always seen the detec­tives car­ry­ing a tray of two cups of car­ry­out cof­fee from a diner. Suddenly a cof­fee machine was a prop in the office that they had set up along with the desks and chairs. We had arrived! At the same time, it was clear that cof­fee roast­ers were not opt­ing into the office cof­fee mar­ket. They sold by the pound, we sold by the cup and they opted to sell to us, not our cus­tomers directly. From that moment on I believed we were going to remain and flour­ish and I made a 1000% commitment.

Well that was a quick look at my start and some of the key events that shaped it but now comes the $64,000 ques­tion: How did I become a so-called “cof­fee legend”?

Well I guess stay­ing at or near the top for almost 39 years is the sim­ple answer. We all know from sports teams that it is one heck of a job to build a cham­pion but it’s quite another job to stay at the top when every­one is try­ing to knock off the king of the castle.

When I started this busi­ness I set up a sim­ple busi­ness plan. Gross profit would be sixty per­cent of sales, 1/3^rd of the GP would go for over­head, 1/3 for wages, and the last third would be profit, thus net profit would be 20% of sales. That has been my objec­tive since day one, but before you get too excited I have to say that I never hit those num­bers, how­ever, I have done well finan­cially while trying.

Secondly, I was for­tu­nate to always remem­ber that ser­vice was a part of our name and busi­ness. We pride our­selves on deliv­er­ing a very high grade of ser­vice and have never been moti­vated to be the cheap­est in town, In fact for 38 years I have taken great pride in always being among the high­est priced ser­vices, if not the high­est and offer­ing our cus­tomers tremen­dous value and ben­e­fits over our com­pe­ti­tion. When prices have to be raised we never hes­i­tate to jump right on it and always try to main­tain our mar­gins. Someone can always offer it cheaper. In fact, you all remem­ber the yel­low pages. Well we refused to adver­tise in them, save and except the free line they gave you with your phone num­ber, because we never quoted prices over the phone as we found that most Yellow Page calls were only price shoppers.

In sum­ma­tion, I have built our com­pany, together with the bonus of hav­ing a smart son with me for the past sev­eral years on a few sim­ple principals:

•    Have a finan­cial plan and stick with it.
•    Always remem­ber that ser­vice is the most impor­tant part of our busi­ness.
•    Don’t be afraid to get your price, remem­ber profit is not a dirty word.
•    Don’t ever dis­count luck but if you are like me, the harder I worked the luck­ier I got.
•    And the most obvi­ous, hire, train, moti­vate, and com­pen­sate good staff.

Quality and Supply Driven Markets — The Future of Washed Arabica Coffee

Coffee in gen­eral and spe­cialty cof­fee in par­tic­u­lar, is a cycli­cal busi­ness. From the nat­ural rhythms of plant­ing, prun­ing and har­vest­ing to the start up, growth and con­sol­i­da­tion of roast­ers and retail­ers, this cycli­cal nature plays out over and over again, and those of us get­ting longer in the tooth rec­og­nize and accept these cycles as a part of the business.

The year we saw what would appear to be some reaf­fir­ma­tions of this cycli­cal nature of the cof­fee busi­ness. In par­tic­u­lar, after two years of tight sup­ply and ele­vated prices, we saw cof­fee stocks increase and prices begin to sub­side. This is typ­i­cal of cof­fees his­tory, with high prices dri­ven by tight sup­ply spurring more inten­sive hus­bandry, new plant­i­ngs and ren­o­va­tion of exist­ing farms. The result­ing increase in sup­ply dri­ves price down, and if the cycle con­tin­ues over time the mar­ket pushes to new bot­toms before the cycle con­tin­ues and hus­bandry declines, new plant­i­ngs cease, and the sup­ply and demand equa­tion slowly turns push­ing prices higher again. There is noth­ing new under the sun here, and it is very tempt­ing to accept this as the nature of the business.

On closer inspec­tion, there is some­thing fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent in the cur­rent cycle. This time, while over­all sup­ply of cof­fee has increased some­what, the real story is not the down­ward price pres­sure of increased sup­ply of cof­fee to the mar­ket. The story of real inter­est is tied up in the kinds of cof­fees being pro­duced, exported and roasted in the marketplace.

Total pro­duc­tion of cof­fee in the 2011/12 crop year was nearly 135 mil­lion bags of cof­fee to sat­isfy a demand of roughly 140 mil­lion bags world­wide. Closer exam­i­na­tion reveals two down­ward dri­vers on price. First, is a 2012/13 crop pre­dic­tion for upwards of 146 mil­lion bags, pro­duc­ing the first sub­stan­tial sur­plus in sup­ply since 2006. The sec­ond is the change in the mix of both sup­ply and demand by cof­fee type. In the 2011/12 crop year robusta pro­duc­tion accounted for over 53 mil­lion bags, or 40% of the world total. Brazil and other nat­ural ara­bi­cas accounted for another 41 mil­lion bags Colombian and other milds just 40 mil­lion bags. The result­ing mix on the world mar­ket is less than 30% washed Arabica and over 70% nat­u­rals and robus­tas. The over­all result was sig­nif­i­cant down­turn in both the ICO indi­ca­tor price and the bench­mark New York ‘C’ price. In spite of a dimin­ished pro­duc­tion of the under­ly­ing prod­uct, washed Arabica cof­fee, fore­cast for the com­ing crop year, prices remain low as roast­ers turned to ever increas­ing com­mit­ments to cof­fees other than washed Arabica.

Much of this change in the mix can be ascribed to increas­ing con­sump­tion in tra­di­tional pro­duc­ing coun­tries, where price sen­si­tiv­ity and entry level con­sump­tion pat­terns push greater con­sump­tion of lower priced and/or qual­i­ties. Some small mea­sure is also attrib­ut­able to mature mar­kets, par­tic­u­larly in Europe, demon­strat­ing a will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice qual­ity for price and push­ing con­sumer expec­ta­tions down­wards. This is another cycle in itself, where decreas­ing qual­ity drags down con­sump­tion, a sce­nario played out in the US in the not dis­tant past. This con­flu­ence of decreas­ing prices, changes in pro­duc­tion mix and increas­ing aggre­gate sup­ply cre­ate an unusual, decid­edly non-cyclical sce­nario in which qual­ity is hard to find and pro­duc­ers strug­gle to find a bal­ance between the costs of qual­ity and dis­ap­pear­ing price incentives.

The cycli­cal nature of growth and con­sol­i­da­tion in the retail mar­kets also had some inter­est­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions this year, most notably the acqui­si­tions of Peet’s Coffee and Tea and Caribou Coffee by the Joh. A. Benckiser Group. In the inde­pen­dent spe­cialty world smaller com­pa­nies con­tin­ued to grow, with new cap­i­tal infu­sions, per­haps most notably Blue Bottle Coffee, dri­ving expan­sion in a vari­ety of markets.

The SCAA con­tinue to work to sup­port and inform the spe­cialty cof­fee com­mu­nity, and we will be adding more insights into the sup­ply and demand sce­nario and its impli­ca­tions for spe­cialty cof­fee as the new year begins. We will also be con­tin­u­ing our work from last year in under­stand­ing the consumer’s rela­tion­ship to spe­cialty cof­fee and will have new infor­ma­tion to share on that topic.

Ric Rhinehart is cur­rently serv­ing as the Executive Director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Prior to tak­ing on this posi­tion he was the President of a Los Angeles, California based roaster and retailer. Mr. Rhinehart has over the past twenty years held exec­u­tive posi­tions in sev­eral cof­fee & tea firms.

Coffee Outlook for 2013 from Rabobank

Coffee prices are expected to increase in 2013 find­ing sup­port from increas­ing global demand and tight­en­ing stock lev­els. Arabica prices are down over 52% from the 2011 high. However, a poten­tial deficit in the 2013–14 sea­son, as well as an already large short spec­u­la­tor posi­tion, will tem­per fur­ther down­side. Robusta mar­ket prices are con­tin­gent on the Vietnamese crop, and as the cur­rent out­look is pos­i­tive, major ral­lies are not antic­i­pated, but expect mod­er­ately higher prices in 2013. The price dif­fer­ence between cof­fee vari­eties has set­tled to a level of sta­bil­ity in the com­ing year. The range-bound out­look for the spread between Arabica and Robusta prices in 2013 is a fore­cast for less volatile price action in the Arabica mar­ket. Coffee con­sump­tion has not decreased, but demand has largely moved away from washed Arabica to Brazilian-natural Arabica or Robusta, which has shifted dif­fer­en­tials closer. This dynamic is a focal point in our fore­casts for mostly lat­eral but pos­i­tive move­ment in 2013.

Arabica fun­da­men­tals are fore­cast to be in sur­plus for 2012 and 2013, which will be a bear­ish aspect weigh­ing on prices in late 2012 and early 2013 due to investor short­ing and hand-to-mouth roaster buy­ing. Market prices may hit a bot­tom in 2012, with a pos­i­tive out­look in 2013 based on new sea­son fun­da­men­tals and increased buy­ing. The fun­da­men­tal fore­cast for Arabica beans in 2012–2013 is for a 4.1 million-bag sur­plus, while early pro­jec­tions for 2013 and 2014 sug­gest a likely deficit. The Arabica price out­look in 2013 is pos­i­tive due to this poten­tial deficit, antic­i­pated roaster buy­ing and Brazilian farm­ers hold­ing sup­ply off the market.

Farmers in Brazil still have a sig­nif­i­cant amount of 2012 Arabica har­vest to sell on the mar­ket, but given their well-capitalized posi­tion and gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for stor­age, we antic­i­pate the sup­ply from Brazil will arrive only if prices are attrac­tive. The spec­u­la­tor gross short position—near his­toric highs—is expected to be pared back in 2013 as the deficit sea­son looms. The gross short posi­tion is equiv­a­lent to 14 mil­lion bags of cof­fee, and a reduc­tion in 2013 will likely sup­port futures prices. With the Arabica mar­ket in sur­plus, buy­ers have dis­ci­plined roast­ers in 2012, likely based on the assump­tion that the over­sup­ply will result in a fur­ther reduc­tion in prices. The out­look for 2013 calls for end users to increase buy­ing to build stocks, which will sup­port a retrac­ing in the market.

Market expec­ta­tions for the 2013 Brazilian Arabica crop will drive roaster buy­ing and spec­u­la­tor posi­tion­ing in the com­ing year. While early devel­op­ment is pos­i­tive, it will be an off-season crop, poten­tially shift­ing the Arabica fun­da­men­tal bal­ance into deficit. The scale of the season-to-season pro­duc­tion shift has fallen in the past decade due to agro­nomic prac­tices. The dif­fer­ence between on– and off-season crops is antic­i­pated to con­tinue to shrink in the com­ing years, but given the scale of Brazilian pro­duc­tion rel­a­tive to global Arabica output—forecasted at 46% in 2012 and 2013—the off-season har­vest will still likely bring about a global deficit in the com­ing sea­sons. Also impact­ing the sup­ply of Arabica in 2013 will be lower incen­tives from prices. Multi-year pro­duc­tion highs of Arabica in Central America, Asia and Africa in 2012 and 2013 were in part a reac­tion to the high­est nom­i­nal sea­son aver­age New York price ever. In 2013, antic­i­pate lower New York val­ues and lower washed dif­fer­en­tials will reduce incen­tives to use inputs and thus mod­er­ate yield poten­tial in the short term. With reduced yields and an off-season Brazilian har­vest, a high prob­a­bil­ity of an expected Arabica deficit sup­port­ing New York prices in 2013 is predicted.

The shift­ing demand pro­file in the cof­fee mar­ket will keep washed Arabica prices and dif­fer­en­tials under pres­sure and sup­port Brazilian Naturals and Robusta mar­kets in 2013. Coffee-demand growth in 2013 is likely to be con­cen­trated in emerg­ing and non­tra­di­tional mar­kets as it has been for the past cou­ple of sea­sons. Given the price con­scious con­sumers in these grow­ing mar­kets, roast­ers are expected to focus on lower-priced beans, there­fore max­i­miz­ing Robusta use. The 2010–2011 price rally in New York sup­ported washed Arabica pro­duc­tion. This, cou­pled with demand mov­ing towards Brazilian Naturals, is pro­jected to result in an over­sup­ply of washed Arabica. In the short term, over­sup­ply is illus­trated by the New York exchange inven­to­ries grow­ing 52% in the sec­ond half of 2012 as ori­gins sell to the board due to mod­est phys­i­cal buy­ing inter­est. The post-boom Arabica mar­ket leaves Brazilian sup­ply in demand while higher cost washed sup­ply exceeds demand. In 2013, the mar­ket will have to pay Brazilian farm­ers higher prices to draw out sup­ply while pro­duc­ers of washed Arabica will find the mar­ket over­sup­plied. This has resulted in dif­fer­en­tials mov­ing closer together, a sit­u­a­tion that is likely to remain in 2013.

The Robusta mar­ket has been bal­anced with strong demand growth and large Vietnamese har­vests, and in 2013 we see this dynamic con­tin­u­ing. Expect the mar­ket to be sup­ported by increased con­sump­tion, espe­cially at ori­gin and in Asia. In our view, the sub­sti­tu­tion of Arabica for Robusta in 2010 and 2011, which esti­mated at between 3 mil­lion and 5 mil­lion bags glob­ally, was a dynamic not expected to occur again. If the Robusta/Arabica price spread remains near cur­rent lev­els, we do not expect con­sump­tion to shift back to Arabica, and we do not expect fur­ther sub­sti­tu­tion. Robusta demand is fore­cast to increase 3.8% in 2012 and 2013, down from 11% the pre­vi­ous year, and will likely grow at a sim­i­lar pace in the fol­low­ing sea­son if prices are near our fore­casts. Robusta mar­ket fun­da­men­tals are fore­cast to be in a mod­est deficit of 204,000 bags in 2012–2013. The con­tin­ued growth in demand is expected to be coun­tered by a large Vietnamese crop of 27 mil­lion bags in the new season.

The spec­u­la­tor gross long posi­tion in the Robusta mar­ket has been pared back sig­nif­i­cantly since its peak in July 2012 as the sup­ply out­look improved. If Vietnamese and Indonesian crops meet expec­ta­tions, investors will likely keep reduc­ing long posi­tions. A sharp rever­sal in the fund posi­tion­ing is prob­a­ble if bull­ish sup­ply news arrives, and con­se­quently our sense for price spike risks in Robusta are ele­vated. With our base case Robusta sup­ply sce­nario for 2012 and 2013, we do not antic­i­pate investors increas­ing the net long lev­els, but we expect com­mer­cial buy­ing and the need to encour­age Robusta pro­duc­tion to be sup­port­ive fac­tors, result­ing in increas­ing prices in 2013. Early sea­son har­vest pres­sure cou­pled with fund liq­ui­da­tion is fore­cast to give way to com­mer­cial buy­ing sup­port­ing futures prices.

Keith Flury, Senior Analyst Soft Commodities for Rabobank

Arabica dif­fer­en­tials have shifted closer together as demand has moved from washed to naturals

Robusta is fore­cast to move to deficit in 2012/13 while Arabica will be in surplus

Composting is Coming Whether You Like It or Not!

The ever-humble cof­fee bean, taken for granted by most in the gen­eral pub­lic, is the key ingre­di­ent for the cof­fee industry’s very sur­vival, and the sur­vival of cof­fee beans depends on its sus­tain­abil­ity. From the grow­ers up to the shop retail­ers, sus­tain­abil­ity and envi­ron­men­tal issues deeply con­cern those in the indus­try. In its own quiet man­ner, cof­fee and its pur­vey­ors have taken a lead in hav­ing their oper­a­tions focus on var­i­ous sus­tain­able options in their daily oper­a­tions, includ­ing energy effi­cient light­ing, reduced water usage and recy­cled prod­ucts for use in deliv­er­ing your cof­fee product.

One of the great con­cerns is the use of cof­fee cups. Whether they are made out of a durable mate­r­ial like ceramic or metal, a typ­i­cal paper petro­leum film lined paper cup (with pos­si­bly a bit of recy­cled fiber in it), or one of the newer fully com­postable cup and lid prod­ucts on the market—they all have their pos­i­tives and neg­a­tives. For instance, a typ­i­cal ceramic or metal ves­sel requires fre­quent wash­ing. One might think this is the most envi­ron­men­tal friendly option, but in real­ity the answer is a lit­tle “yes” and a lot more “NO”. To really assess the full impact, an oper­a­tor needs to under­stand the full con­text of what it takes to wash that cup or ther­mos. The car­bon foot­print is actu­ally quite large. One needs to con­sider the fol­low­ing: the energy needed to heat the water, the cost of man­u­fac­tur­ing, ship­ping and dis­tri­b­u­tion the soaps and clean­ers used to wash them in the hot water (not to men­tion many of the basic addi­tives to the soaps that are deriv­a­tives of petroleum-based chem­i­cals), the waste—or “Gray water”—that goes down the drain and the energy used to pump that waste water, clean­ing it at a waste-water treat­ment facil­ity, and dis­pos­ing sludge from the water before it can be allowed back into a fresh water source.

On the other hand, your stan­dard single-use paper hot cup with a poly sip hole lid might be a bet­ter answer. It does use nat­ural fibers that are renew­able, and in some offer­ings the very paper itself is made of par­tially recy­cled mate­r­ial. All the mate­ri­als are, in the­ory, recyclable—but, in real­ity, none really are or can­not be. The rea­son is because the food-wastes that are left on the paper or plas­tic con­t­a­m­i­nantes the recy­cling of these prod­ucts. Most of the cups end up in land­fills. Paper itself can only be recy­cled about 3–5 times before becom­ing so poor in qual­ity that they end up as land­fill dis­posal or com­postable mate­r­ial. The same thing is true with the poly lids—the food waste on the lid ren­ders it essen­tially non-recyclable.  The rea­son is that food waste con­t­a­m­i­nates the recy­clable mate­ri­als and the nec­es­sary pro­cess­ing of those materials—contaminants can­not be allowed or the mak­ing of the new mate­ri­als will be flawed or similar.

That brings us to the devel­op­ment of com­postable cups, lids and other ser­vice ware. They use much the same mate­ri­als and energy as single-use paper cups, but with one key dif­fer­ence: All the mate­ri­als, includ­ing the plas­tic film lin­ing, are made from nat­ural plant raw mate­ri­als. Even the man­u­fac­tur­ing process requires less energy in its over­all struc­ture, which results in a reduced car­bon foot­print. By being com­postable, there are sig­nif­i­cant declines in raw garbage to landfills.

One of the ben­e­fits of a com­mu­nity and indus­try that com­posts as its entire oper­a­tion is that com­post­ing is local and reduces the need for land­fills. It is a local job creator—for instance, a sin­gle com­mer­cial com­post­ing oper­a­tion cre­ates four jobs while a land­fill cre­ates only one, based on fig­ures from the US Composting Council. Also, the com­post end prod­uct can be used on agri­cul­tural crops as a fer­til­izer, reduc­ing depen­dency on man-made fer­til­iz­ers, or home gar­dens, lawns, ero­sion con­trol, etc. What you have in com­postable cups is a full cir­cle of life use. And this trend is not only hap­pen­ing with cups, lids, take out boxes etc.—but also with plas­tic bags and food wastes. Food that is thrown out accounts for over 70%, by weight, of all garbage sent to land­fills. Think about the tremen­dous use of energy, soils, fer­til­iz­ers, etc. needed to grow food that is sim­ply being thrown away. Reversing long-held beliefs and prac­tices to inno­va­tions like com­post­ing prod­ucts with food wastes can deliver busi­nesses and com­mu­ni­ties a sus­tain­able future for gen­er­a­tions to come.

Whether you like it or not, Composting is coming.

President of Asean Corporation, par­ent com­pany of the Stalkmarket fam­ily of the branded com­postable prod­ucts for the cen­ter­plate food­ser­vice indus­try.  Also serves as President of the Biodegradable Products Institutue,  and is an active  mem­ber of the US Composting Council. National Restaurant Association and var­i­ous local com­mu­nity social and sus­tain­able com­mu­nity groups in the Portland Oregon area, where Asean has its world headquarters.

Roaster Issues — Selecting Material Handling Equipment

Coffee han­dling solu­tions in today’s envi­ron­ment require a con­sid­ered focus on safety, energy con­sump­tion and reli­a­bil­ity. There are a num­ber of com­pa­nies who offer mate­r­ial han­dling and con­vey­ing sys­tems as merely an acces­sory for other equip­ment. Unfortunately, their prod­uct and expe­ri­ence often reflects this. Given the poten­tial for prob­lems with all but the freest flow­ing of mate­ri­als, it is essen­tial to select a sup­plier who spe­cial­izes in mate­r­ial han­dling. Look for a com­pany that has expe­ri­ence with the prod­ucts you han­dle and one that has sig­nif­i­cant tech­ni­cal exper­tise to apply their equip­ment to the spe­cific require­ments of the appli­ca­tion. This nor­mally requires an engi­neered solu­tion, with lay­out draw­ings and any nec­es­sary cus­tom designed parts to adapt the sys­tem to suit the appli­ca­tion and loca­tion. Does the sup­plier offer a prod­uct test? Testing of your exact mate­r­ial will ensure that the rec­om­mended solu­tion oper­ates as expected and this step often elim­i­nates sur­prises at startup. Does the sup­plier guar­an­tee their rec­om­mended solu­tion and pro­vide instal­la­tion and post sales sup­port? Issues can arise dur­ing the instal­la­tion and you want a sup­plier com­mit­ted to quickly and effec­tively work through these with you.

From an equip­ment per­spec­tive con­sider a ven­dor who can sup­ply solu­tions for mov­ing the cof­fee between processes with a com­plete range of con­vey­ors, fill­ing and dis­charge sys­tems with high lev­els of con­tain­ment. Keep in mind that dur­ing the mate­r­ial han­dling process, what­ever the indus­try, even the most harm­less ingre­di­ents can become a haz­ard when they appear as dust in the atmos­phere. ‘Homemade’ fab­ri­ca­tions can never match the safety, reli­a­bil­ity and con­tain­ment offered by spe­cial­ist sup­pli­ers demanded by today’s indus­trial prac­tices and cur­rent leg­is­la­tion. Your mate­r­ial han­dling solu­tion may include silo/hopper/container/bag unload­ing, process links (con­vey­ing between processes or from process to pack­ag­ing) and con­tainer fill­ing (super sack/bulk bag, bag, box or tote filling).

Bag/Container Unloading: Raw ingre­di­ents can arrive in a vari­ety of bulk con­tain­ers from 50 lb. bags to 2,000 lb. super sacks/bulk bags or even drums, boxes and totes, and need to be trans­ported to the process from these con­tain­ers. Specialist sup­pli­ers offer mate­r­ial han­dling equip­ment to empty and fill these var­i­ous con­tain­ers and offer sev­eral con­vey­ing and con­trolled feed options suit­able for con­vey­ing whole green cof­fee beans, roasted cof­fee beans and ground cof­fee from the con­tain­ers to the roast­ing process.

Silo/Hopper Unloading: Depending on the require­ment, this can be as sim­ple as a slide gate or but­ter­fly valve with a vol­u­met­ric feed or as com­plex as a loss in weight, load cell and PLC weight con­trolled feed using a bin acti­va­tor. Bin acti­va­tors use the angle of repose of the mate­r­ial and tilt­ing lou­ver blades with vibra­tion assis­tance to con­trol prod­uct flow in an accu­rate and con­trolled feed to the next part of the process. The cor­rect selec­tion of equip­ment here could elim­i­nate a con­veyor or process step.

Process Link Equipment solu­tions vary based on spe­cific appli­ca­tion require­ments. Roasters should con­sider three mechan­i­cal con­vey­ing methods.

Flexible Screw Conveyors (FSC) pro­vide dust free, low energy, low main­te­nance and low cost con­vey­ing solu­tions. FSCs pro­vide gen­tle han­dling and con­stant remix­ing of the con­veyor con­tents. Constant mix­ing is an inter­est­ing advan­tage of this type of con­veyor. A centre-less auger rotates within a sealed tube and the speed and heli­cal action of the screw encour­age the prod­uct in the con­veyor to rotate with the screw with each par­ti­cle in motion. This cre­ates a con­stant tum­bling effect that pro­vides a homoge­nous mix of par­ti­cles in the con­veyor and is essen­tial when feed­ing pre-mixed ingre­di­ents to pack­ag­ing or process machines. It is also pos­si­ble to use this type of con­veyor as an ingre­di­ent mixer by adding a sec­ond prod­uct inlet onto a con­veyor. A con­trolled feed will pro­vide a pro­por­tional ingre­di­ent mix­ture. Selection of con­veyor size, screw sec­tion and speed are deter­mined dur­ing testing.

Aero-Mechanical Conveyors (AMC) are often over­looked but are very effi­cient for con­vey­ing cof­fee. This type of con­veyor pro­vides high con­vey­ing capac­i­ties and a total batch trans­fer. The totally enclosed tubu­lar sys­tem pro­vides a path for the dri­ven rope and disc assem­bly to move around the cir­cuit and the result is a gen­tle con­vey­ing action and a reli­able means of trans­port­ing cof­fee from process A to B.

A Georgia based roaster has used an AMC for 8 hours per day for 14 years to trans­fer blends of roasted cof­fee from a mixer to a pack­ag­ing machine with­out any new com­po­nents. The reli­a­bil­ity and longevity of this equip­ment solu­tion indi­cates that this type of con­veyor was cor­rectly selected for the task.

Tubular Drag Conveying: This con­veyor cir­cuit is made up of straight and curved tubes to pro­vide a totally enclosed tubu­lar sys­tem that pro­vides a path for a dri­ven rope and disc assem­bly to move around the cir­cuit. The result is very gen­tle con­vey­ing action. This is more sophis­ti­cated than an FSC or AMC and allows for com­plex cir­cuits with mul­ti­ple inlet and dis­charge points. It does not use air as a con­vey­ing medium. Instead it relies on the equally pitched discs along the cable to form equal pock­ets within the con­vey­ing cir­cuit that are suit­able for con­tain­ing cof­fee in all its forms. When the rope and disc assem­bly are in motion (dri­ven by a sprocket) the cof­fee fed through an inlet port is con­tained within the trav­el­ling pock­ets and gen­tly dragged around the cir­cuit until it reaches a dis­charge out­let in the cir­cuit. This con­veyor pro­vides total batch trans­fer but sac­ri­fices con­vey­ing rate due to a lower oper­at­ing speed than an AMC. Operating speed is deter­mined by the com­plex­ity of the cir­cuit and dis­tance travelled.

Working with a sup­plier that offers mul­ti­ple con­vey­ing prod­ucts will ensure that the strengths of each con­vey­ing method are objec­tively con­sid­ered for your application.

Container Filling: If a roaster doesn’t com­plete pack­ag­ing after roast­ing, they may need to move bulk vol­umes of cof­fee and there­fore require a fill­ing sys­tem. These are avail­able with var­i­ous lev­els of com­plex­ity to suit every bud­get. Generally the larger the bud­get the more auto­mated the process and this means it will be more efficient.

For exam­ple, fill­ing machines are designed with new pro­gram­ma­ble con­trollers designed to increase fill­ing accu­racy and cycle speed. Automatic gain in weight adjust­ment mon­i­tors com­pen­sates for any weight vari­a­tions within an accu­racy of +/- 1%. This level of sophis­ti­ca­tion on fillers is ideal for com­pa­nies seek­ing NTEP approval. There are also many cus­tom fea­tures avail­able to suit dif­fer­ent con­tain­ers and applications.

The most reli­able sup­pli­ers of mate­r­ial han­dling equip­ment will have a wide range of prod­ucts to choose from when rec­om­mend­ing a solu­tion, can eas­ily cus­tomize their equip­ment for dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, pro­vide a mate­r­ial test and have a strong post sales sup­port track record.  In other words, the right sup­plier will be more than a ven­dor but a part­ner with a vested inter­est in pro­vid­ing a safe, effi­cient and reli­able solution.

David Hesketh is Vice President of Engineering for Spiroflow Systems, Inc. Hesketh has 26 years expe­ri­ence in mate­r­ial han­dling par­tic­u­larly the design and devel­op­ment of con­vey­ors and bulk han­dling equip­ment. He has worked for Spiroflow in the United States and the United Kingdom for 23 years and holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Central Lancashire.

Coffee Packaging Freshness

You roast this amaz­ing cof­fee, and then what? How do you pre­serve the fresh­ness and make the fla­vor last? Will your cus­tomers have a good expe­ri­ence with your cof­fee three weeks down the road? As you may know, like other per­ish­able prod­ucts, the loss or gain of oxy­gen and car­bon diox­ide can rob cof­fee of its fla­vor and aro­matic char­ac­ter­is­tics. External aro­mas and odors can also add unde­sir­able fla­vors, ulti­mately degrad­ing the qual­ity of the beans. Freshness is an essen­tial fac­tor when refer­ring to roasted cof­fee qual­ity since it will have an effect on the taste of cof­fee and there­fore cus­tomer satisfaction.

Bearing in mind that pack­ag­ing is what pro­tects cof­fee from exter­nal gases, select­ing the right type will have a direct effect on the preser­va­tion of qual­ity and fresh­ness. According to Mark Howley, Chairman and CEO of Pacific Bag (PBI), “Coffee is adversely affected by oxida­tive ran­cid­ity. It is gen­er­ally believed cof­fee taste will degrade within 10–14 days after roast­ing if cof­fee is exposed to oxy­gen. Packaging has a huge impact or effect on qual­ity if dis­tri­b­u­tion time extends beyond a week or so.” Moreover, accord­ing to Coffee Analysts “The rate of cof­fee stal­ing will depend upon the amount of con­tact with oxy­gen. Conditions of heat and added mois­ture will accel­er­ate stal­ing. Moisture-resistant sealed pack­ag­ing with a min­i­mum of oxy­gen con­tent is the key to cof­fee shelf life.”¹ For this rea­son, if your goal is increas­ing shelf life, some essen­tial fac­tors to take into con­sid­er­a­tion are: the mate­ri­als of the pack­ag­ing, the type of valve, and degassing.

Materials – Select Wisely

Packaging mate­ri­als vary from metal cans to paper tin tie through poly­ester, or alu­minum foil bags. According to Joy Weedon, Marketing and Sales Manager at Pack Plus Converting Corp, “Our pack­ag­ing ranges from low-barrier to high-barrier mate­r­ial depend­ing on the shelf life one requires. For instance, tin tie paper bags are used mainly for every­day at the shop while higher-barrier foil pack­ag­ing allows roast­ers to pre-pack cof­fee for dis­play on the retail shelf whether at their own shop or at the local gro­cery store.”

According to Chris Burger, Coffee Market Manager at Fres-co System USA, Inc. “The key to fresh cof­fee is using the cor­rect bar­rier mate­ri­als for the desired shelf-life. The typ­i­cal retail bag requires a layer of thin alu­minum to pre­vent oxy­gen from enter­ing into the bags.” In addi­tion, Weedon adds, “Foil mate­r­ial is an effec­tive bar­rier against mainly light, oxy­gen and mois­ture and is the pre­ferred choice of many cof­fee roast­ers.” The pack­ag­ing mate­r­ial should be selected tak­ing into account the shelf life you desire. Ask your­self: Will the cof­fee be sold at your shop or in gro­cery stores? What is the usual turnover of inven­tory? Will the mate­r­ial be resis­tant to endure all the han­dling involved in the logistics?

Degassing – Just Let It Out

Valves

After roast­ing, cof­fee releases CO2, up to 1000 cc per pound. Fresh whole beans will release gases for sev­eral weeks after roast­ing. While many roast­ers might allow their cof­fee to de-gas in stor­age by let­ting it sit for a period of time before pack­ag­ing, valves allow you to pack­age your roasted cof­fee right away. The main pur­pose of a valve is to allow these gases to escape, with­out allow­ing any exter­nal gases, such as oxy­gen, to come in.

Multiple fac­tors should be taken into account when select­ing valves. According to Burger, “It is crit­i­cal to under­stand the per­for­mance of the valve selected.  Where is it made?  What is the open­ing and clos­ing pres­sure?  What is the fail­ure rate?  Many times a bag can be a leaker directly through the valve caus­ing cof­fee to stale in weeks.”

According to Nick Greco, Global Segment Manager at Avery Dennison Designed and Engineered Solutions, “Flexis tech­nol­ogy has sev­eral advan­tages over con­ven­tional hard valve tech­nol­ogy. Flexis valves allow for up to a 30 per­cent increase in appli­ca­tion through­put and a 30 per­cent – 50 per­cent prod­uct pur­chase advan­tage over hard valves. Plus, they offer excep­tional per­for­mance char­ac­ter­is­tics. Tests con­ducted in con­junc­tion with a major uni­ver­sity show that the valves main­tain less than 2 per­cent resid­ual oxy­gen for 24 months, equal­ing the reli­a­bil­ity of hard but­ton valves.”

Gas Flushing

Modified Atmospheric Packaging (M.A.P.), also known as Nitrogen or Gas Flushing, refers to a process where a roaster, within a few hours of roast­ing, evac­u­ates the bag of all oxy­gen, flushes it with inert gas such as nitro­gen to fill the voids that used to be taken up by air, and then ther­mally seals the bag. This process is rec­om­mended when con­sid­er­ing expan­sion into gro­cery stores since increas­ing shelf life and pre­serv­ing qual­ity are a priority.

According to Burger, “There have been many stud­ies that show cof­fee that has been gas flushed remains fresher longer as com­pared to cof­fee that has not been gas flushed. Many believe that sim­ply putting fresh cof­fee into a bag and seal­ing it will give 6 months plus of shelf life.  The issue is the oxy­gen in the cof­fee bag at time of seal­ing will start to stale the cof­fee and shorten the shelf life.”

Considering that it is rec­om­mended to have no more than 3% oxy­gen con­tent in the pack­age¹, it is impor­tant to select wisely when pur­chas­ing and select­ing pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als and meth­ods. If you are only plan­ning to sell your roasted cof­fee in your stores, tin tie paper bags can be the most cost-effective option. However, if your pri­mary pur­pose is increas­ing shelf life, you will need to take into account the usage of a high-barrier mate­r­ial, effec­tive valves, and Nitrogen Flushing meth­ods to increase the pre­serve the qual­ity and fla­vor of the beans.

¹Coffee Analysts, Coffee Packaging and Shelf life, March 29^th 2011, Retrieved September 24, 2012. From http://www.coffeeanalysts.com/2011/03/coffee-packaging-and-shelf-life/

Degassing Valve Advancements 
Cut Coffee Processing Time

A new gen­er­a­tion of degassing valves is help­ing plant man­agers, oper­a­tions direc­tors and pack­ag­ing engi­neers to cut time and costs asso­ci­ated with cof­fee pro­cess­ing, while keep­ing prod­ucts fresh through­out their shelf life.

The advanced tech­nol­ogy con­sists of tri-layered, flex­i­ble valves that can be applied to vir­tu­ally any loca­tion of a cof­fee pack­age at high speed. This flex­i­bil­ity in place­ment opens up nearly any part of the cof­fee package’s sur­face area for pro­mo­tional, brand or prod­uct con­tent messaging.

The valve tech­nol­ogy is the newest devel­op­ment in cof­fee degassing, a process that allows the escape of CO2 that would oth­er­wise affect the fresh­ness of beans and ground cof­fee. It caps an evo­lu­tion that is pre­dated by bin degassing and, more recently, hard but­ton degassing valves.

The eco­nom­ics of the new tech­nol­ogy are expected to boost the tri-layered valves over bin degassing and con­ven­tional hard but­ton valves as the pre­ferred degassing method for roast­ers worldwide.

Bin Degassing

Bin degassing employs open metal silos that con­tain roasted cof­fee and allow its CO2 to escape. The expo­sure to open air, how­ever, can reduce the coffee’s fresh­ness. Roasters can place a mod­i­fied atmos­phere above the degassing cof­fee to help retain fresh­ness. However, the cof­fee does not remain as fresh as when packed imme­di­ately after roast­ing. The bin degassing silos incur a cap­i­tal invest­ment and main­te­nance costs. The process also requires hold­ing work-in-process (WIP) inven­tory, some­times for a day or more, and lim­its the coffee’s speed to mar­ket. Such busi­ness con­cerns led to the cre­ation of degassing valve tech­nol­ogy that emerged on the scene decades ago.

Hard but­ton degassing valves allow proces­sors to pack­age and ship cof­fee imme­di­ately after roast­ing and grind­ing. The valve’s place­ment is typ­i­cally at the upper por­tion of the pack­age. The valves heat seal to pack­ages at a rate of 25 – 45 per minute. The heat seal unit works in tan­dem with ver­ti­cal form and fill machines that are capa­ble of fill­ing one-lb. bags at speeds of 65 per minute. Accordingly, the heat seal appli­ca­tion of hard but­ton valves lim­its the form and fill machine’s speed by 30 per­cent or more.

The actual degassing process involves CO2 pres­sure build­ing inside the pack­age, lift­ing the valve’s rub­ber escape disk and exit­ing the pack­age. The heat seal process leaves a cir­cu­lar “scar” at the valve’s pack­age loca­tion. In addi­tion, pack­ages may some­times present a “brick” appear­ance sub­se­quent to degassing, mak­ing for a non-uniform appear­ance of pack­ages on store shelves.

Cost per valve and the appli­ca­tion process’s rel­a­tively slow speed have tra­di­tion­ally under­mined the hard but­ton valve’s prod­uct fresh­ness advan­tages. For that rea­son, roast­ers have had to care­fully choose which appli­ca­tions would be eco­nom­i­cally viable.

21^st Century Degassing Valve Technology

Tri-layered flex­i­ble valves apply to pack­ages in a way that reduces pro­cess­ing time, leaves no “scar” and will not cause “brick­ing.” Supplied in rolls of 15,000, the valves apply via a high-speed pressure-sensitive valve appli­ca­tor that inte­grates seam­lessly into pack­ag­ing lines. Unlike heat seal valves, the flex­i­ble valve neatly “wipes on.” The pack­ag­ing line does not need to momen­tar­ily stop, as it does with each hard but­ton valve. The pres­sure sen­si­tive valve appli­ca­tor keeps pace with the cof­fee pack­ag­ing line’s fill­ing rate of 65 per minute for one lb. pack­ages, account­ing for a 30 per­cent faster through­out com­pared with heat seal-based valve tech­nol­ogy. It can also keep pace with much faster speeds, up to 120 per minute for frac­tional cof­fee packages.

The valve’s tri-layered con­struc­tion presents a tor­tur­ous path for the escape of CO2. In oper­a­tion, as CO2 pres­sure builds inside the pack­age, it enters and escapes through two of the valve’s lay­ers, while the third remains sealed to pre­vent oxy­gen from enter­ing the pack­age. The sys­tem is suf­fi­ciently effec­tive to keep resid­ual oxy­gen at only two per­cent or less, a level that matches the indus­try stan­dard. An added ben­e­fit: the flex­i­ble valves employ 90 per­cent less plas­tic than hard but­ton valves, account­ing for a 30 per­cent – 50 per­cent lower price and an oppor­tu­nity for users to reduce their car­bon footprint.

One major cof­fee proces­sor recently adopted flex­i­ble valve degassing tech­nol­ogy for jumbo frac­tional pack­ages. Valve tech­nol­ogy enables the roaster to bypass time con­sum­ing bin degassing. More, the flex­i­ble valve’s “pre-oiled” fea­ture is a key fac­tor in the processor’s speed to mar­ket. Valves that come pre-oiled have a pre­cise amount of food-grade sil­i­cone oil at the nec­es­sary valve loca­tion to ensure pro­tec­tion against oxy­gen ingress. The pre-oiled fea­ture can save time and reduce scrap and clean up by elim­i­nat­ing the need to oil valves dur­ing the pack­ag­ing process.

Photo shows triangular-shaped, tri-layered pressure-sensitive flex­i­ble degassing valve posi­tioned on the pack­age to the left. (Photo cour­tesy of Avery Dennison Designed and Engineered Solutions.)