With a history stretching back more than 250 years, Beyers Koffie, Belgium’s largest coffee roaster, is determined to move with the times. At the end of 2025, the company will be one of the first in the world to inaugurate a 100% electric industrial roasting line.
Beyers Koffie, now part of the Swiss Sucafina group, was founded in Antwerp in 1880, but its roots stretch back to the Netherlands and the mid-18th century. Over the years and through the ages, the roaster has grown to become the number 1 in its sector in Belgium and one of the major players in the European private label market, its core business. But despite this rich history, the company has not forgotten to look to the future. ‘I would say our vision is to be the leading roaster of sustainable private label coffee in Europe,’ explains Cory Bush, CEO of Beyers Koffie Group. ‘Of course, that means doing a number of things, through a wide variety of projects. Because coffee is a tropical agricultural commodity, we need to focus on sustainability from the farm to the consumer, which is quite a broad spectrum. This ranges from sustainability issues at farm level, to packaging, to the use of energy in our regions’.
On this last point, Beyers Koffie has already taken a number of steps, starting with sourcing green electricity and installing solar panels on the roofs of its factory in Puurs-Sint-Amands. But many other companies, both in and outside the coffee sector, are already doing all this. The real innovation that the roaster has embarked on is the installation of a 100% electric roasting line, a rarity at present in a sector that is particularly dependent on natural gas.
‘Fossil fuel-free roasting is the future’
‘Electric roasting is going to be an important turning point for us,’ continues Cory Bush. ‘We see fossil fuel-free roasting as the future. Not only does it have a significant positive impact on the environment, but I’m also thinking of the economic aspect. Admittedly, it’s a little more expensive today, but the advantages are obvious: you don’t need gas and you can use renewable energy. But the cost of carbon emissions is only going to rise, while the cost of green energy will continue to fall. Over time, this solution will only make more and more sense, both environmentally and economically. Not to mention that if we take the example of the car industry, where there are more and more financial incentives to move away from combustion engines, the same kind of measures should apply to other sectors. But when? I don’t know, but it will happen. Finally, I also think that over time, when our customers start to focus more on their scope 3 emissions (indirect emissions generated upstream or downstream of a company’s supply chain, editor’s note), the way in which we produce our coffee on their behalf will become increasingly important. So we see this as a medium to long-term competitive advantage.
Currently still at the design and engineering stage, Beyers Koffie’s future electric roasting line should come on stream towards the end of 2025, at least that’s the target the company has set itself. Once operational, the line should be able to cover a significant proportion of the roaster’s production, perhaps even up to half. ‘It’s a new technology,’ stresses the CEO. ‘And every time you work with a new technology, you have to relearn a whole series of things and adapt the methods used in the past. There will certainly be a learning curve, but we’re very confident in the quality of the technology.
‘We’re in favour of certification, but our customers have the final say’.
As well as the potential environmental benefits of electric roasting, and the use of renewable energy, Cory Bush has not forgotten that the heart of the problem of CO2 emissions in the coffee sector does not necessarily lie in the processing countries, but in the producing regions. ‘The majority of carbon emissions don’t come from roasting and selling, they come from upstream activities, i.e. the production of green coffee, mainly due to the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. In addition to our environmental and social development projects in producer countries, we also have a range of organic products. And more broadly, I’d say that around two thirds of the coffee we roast has sustainable certification, whether Rainforest Alliance, organic, Fairtrade, etc.’
Why not all of it, given the commitment that seems to drive Beyers Koffie? ‘We are a private label producer,’ says the CEO. ‘So the types of products we use are determined by our customers. So if a retailer tells us he wants an organic product, we’ll be very happy and perfectly capable of producing it. If they need a Rainforest Alliance range, we’ll do it. We always try to convince our customers that sustainability is at the heart of our growth, which is why we always offer the sustainable option first, followed by a discussion phase. Generally speaking, we like to work with customers who are genuinely interested in sustainable development. That’s where we can add a lot of value and help our customers to do really good things. All this to say that we are very much in favour of certification, but it’s generally the market and our customers who have the final say. The good news is that the trend is clearly towards increasingly sustainable production. Another source of hope for Cory Bush is the legislative advances in environmental, social and other standards. ‘All this will help to create a level playing field for everyone. One of the big problems up until now for people who wanted to do the right thing was that they were always up against competition from people who didn’t care.
‘If coffee doesn’t prosper, our business won’t survive’
Yet time is running out for the coffee industry. ‘Over the last 5 to 10 years, we have seen a change in rainfall and temperature patterns, which is making coffee production difficult in many parts of the world. Climate change is something that farmers have been experiencing and seeing first-hand for a number of years now,’ warns Cory Bush. ‘What’s more, it’s also essential to ensure that these farmers earn enough money from coffee to be able to continue producing it. This has always been a challenge for the sector, but it is exacerbated when harvests are less reliable from one year to the next, as is the case with climate change…’. The CEO of Beyers Koffie concludes with a warning: ‘We need coffee to thrive, and for it to thrive we believe it needs to be more sustainable. If it isn’t, we won’t survive as a business.
