STiR coffee and tea magazine

30 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 3, 2017 (June/July) B By Dan Shryock Small-Scale Pack & Fill rian Zielinski acknowledges single-serve packaging is only a fraction of his com- pany's wholesale coffee roasting business. Still, some customers insist on private label capsules and his company needs to provide them. "The K-cup business is a very small part of our work," said Zielinski, the director of business development for Oregon-based West Coast Coffee. "But our customers don't want to go somewhere else for their K-cups and we want our coffee packed in house." Like countless other small- to mid-size roasters, West Coast Coffee needed an entry-level machine. They turned to United Home Technologies about a year ago and purchased an iFill800XP, a tabletop solution that delivers up to 1,200 cups per hour. "This is a good stepping stool for us," Zielinski said. "It's one more piece for our portfolio and you've got to start somewhere." United Home Technologies, with its "iFill Cup" systems, is among a growing list of fill-and-pack manufacturers supplying single-serve filling equipment to meet smaller production demands. Eastsign International Ltd. recently debuted new entry-level fill- ing and sealing machines while GIMA, already producing large-scale filling equipment, acquired majority control of a nearby Italian company to meet the demand. The coffee industry's single-serve segment remains strong. The National Coffee Association (NCA) estimates household penetration at 33% in the U.S. based on its January 2017 survey of past-day coffee drinkers. "This com- pares to 29% in 2016," said Joe DeRupo, NCA director of external relations & com- munications. "We also see increased interest versus 2016 in buying a single-cup brewer in the next six months. This argues for continued growth of the systems," he said. In an addition to overall growth in the percentage of past-day coffee drinkers, long- term trends suggest the popularity of gourmet coffee beverages continues. Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed in 2010 preferred gourmet, according to the National Coffee Drinking Trends (NCDT) survey in January of that year. In the latest survey past-day coffee drinkers account for 67% of total cups. Past-day consumption of espresso- based beverages grew to 60% this year, up from 50% in 2010, according to the NCDT. An employee at West Coast Coffee in Hillsboro, Oregon, removes K-cups from a tabletop style coffee capsule packing machine.

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