STiR coffee and tea magazine

38 STiR coffee and tea | 2026 Quarter 1 Spring (Mar/Apr/May) T By Diana Jendoubi Meeting Modern Demands: PROBAT's New Cx70 Drum Roaster PROBAT's new Cx70 drum roaster has the best price-to-performance ratio on the market. Photo credit: PROBAT Highly configurable but deliberately modular — customers only pay for the Cx70 features they actually need. Photo credit: PROBAT oday's coffee roasters face rising raw material prices, high production and energy costs, and fluctuating logistics rates. Such seemingly insur- mountable obstacles make it nearly impossible for small- to medium- sized roasters and coffee suppliers to enter the market. However, PROBAT's new Cx70 drum roaster offers classic industrial roasting reliability while meet- ing the modern demands for lower operating costs, higher efficiency, and flexible automation — making it easier for SME's to succeed. As the global market and innovation leader in coffee processing solu- tions, PROBAT understands what coffee enterprises need to thrive and grow amidst such challenging times. In an interview with STiR Coffee and Tea Media, PROBAT's product manager, Mark Weimer, and CTO Digital PROBAT, Se- bastian Fichthorn, discuss how the Cx70 builds on PROBAT's long-standing engineering expertise while being fully redesigned for optimal performance and maximum technical complexity. Reengineered for Cost Efficiency "What we're seeing in the market is an increasing view on costs, because globally, we're all facing rising energy costs, and certainly in the field of cof- fee roasting, we're experiencing higher raw material prices," explains Weimer. "There are a lot of new, smaller regional coffee roaster suppliers that require more accessible machinery." The Cx70 offers industrial performance without paying for unnecessary options and is designed to be approximately a third more cost-effective per kilogram than comparable one-bag roasters. Its entry-level pricing is signifi- cantly lower than that of other machines in the 60-70kg class. "It's important to us, at PROBAT, to re- spond to the industry's changing circumstances and growing needs," says Weimer. "When we developed the Cx70, it was our goal to provide a new coffee roasting machine that meets those de- mands, especially in terms of cost." PROBAT's design team started with a blank sheet of paper and evaluated every single compo- nent on the machine in terms of cost, "without compromising the key elements that PROBAT is known for, quality, reliability, user ergonomics, and efficiency," explains Weimer. While maintaining a strong focus on PRO- BAT's core values, the Cx70 also meets custom- ers' needs at a much lower price. "We came to ap- proximately 30% below the competitor's prices for comparable roasters in the market," says Weimer. Higher Throughput in a Familiar Format With a nominal batch capacity of 70kg, the Cx70 can roast approximately 350kg of coffee beans an hour, or more depending on the recipe and roast- ing times. It's designed for roasters looking to scale production without moving into fully con- tinuous systems. Weimer notes that the Cx70 is perfect for a growing roastery "maybe coming from the spe- cialty segment, that needs to increase its total cof- fee production, as well as companies that want to focus on a higher level of automation and greater efficiency."

• Cover