Costa to build new roastery to support growth plans
Costa, the Whitbread owned coffee shop chain, is to build a new roastery to support its national and international growth ambitions.
The new facility in Basildon, which is due to open in 2017, will operate in conjunction with Costa’s existing roastery in London’s Lambeth which roasts coffee 24 hours a day, five days a week.
Costa will be investing an estimated £36 million in the new site which will help to meet expected demand to 2020 and beyond.
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 in 1971. Costa’s current roastery capacity is 11,000 tonnes but the new site will be able to produce 45,000 tonnes, thereby helping to supply the 464 million cups of coffee Costa customers consumed last year.
In its full-year results, Costa announced a 17.9% uplift in sales and a new growth target which will boost Costa system sales from £1.4 billion in 2014/15 to £2.5 billion in 2020.
