Costa turned on its new £38m roastery this week. The site, in Basildon, Essex, is one of the biggest coffee roasting facilities in Europe, enabling the chain to produce 45,000 tonnes of coffee a year – enough to make 2.1 billion cups of Joe.
However, it’s the sustainability of the site that sets it apart. “Paradise Street will also be one of the most sustainable industrial buildings in the world,” Costa claimed.
The 85,690 square foot facility will operate on a zero waste-to-landfill basis. On-site renewable energy will further reduce the carbon footprint with a 249kw solar PV system providing power to roast 24 tonnes of green coffee an hour – four times the throughput of the old site in Lambeth.
The building and the internal roasting equipment will also have a “wide array of other sustainability features”, drawing on lessons learned from Costa’s Eco Pod coffee shop and wider environmental innovation across parent company Whitbread and its Premier Inn business.
The location, just 14 miles from Tilbury Docks where the green beans arrive, will also cut road miles and improve supply efficiency.
“The design brief for the new roastery was to focus on quality and sustainability, ensuring that Costa’s high quality coffee standards were met but with the minimal environmental footprint,” reads the announcement on the company’s website.
Costa MD Dominic Paul said the roastery is a “statement of our ambition to grow and our passion for great coffee”.
Whitbread, Costa’s parent company, has a target to reduce carbon emissions by 15% by 2020 from a 2014/15 baseline.
