EUROPE – Swedish family-owned coffee company, Löfbergs, has opened a whole bean roastery in Karlstad, Sweden to meet the rising demand for whole beans.  

The new site built at a cost of US$23.3 million comes 115 years after the company was founded and follows a two-year building project. 

According to a statement from the company, the new roastery has a capacity of 10,000 tons per year, with the potential to double production in the future. 

The new facility will use a slow-roast method, with all the roastery’s energy supply coming from green sources, the company said. 

“We have invested SEK 200 million, which is the largest investment in the history of the company,” said Kathrine Löfberg, chair of the Löfbergs board. 

“It is certainly a milestone, and it is very special for us to have the inauguration 115 years to the day after my great grandfather founded Löfbergs.” 

The new coffee roastery joins Löfbergs’ existing roastery in Karlstad – which is specialized in ground coffee. 

Mondelēz modernizes French bakery plant 

Meanwhile, American multinational snack food company, Mondelēz has announced plans to invest about US$59 million into modernizing its bakery plant in Jussy (Aisne), France.  

The investment follows a fire outbreak at the century-old facility last September that completely destroyed the production line on the 2nd floor as well as most of that on the 1st floor.   

With the investment, the snack giant plans to add new technologies and capabilities to the site, as well as increase capacity, to support its bakery growth ambitions in Europe.  

The overall goal for Mondelēz is to ‘transform’ the facility in the Hauts-de-France region into a modernized, more flexible plant. 

The facility – which celebrates its 100th anniversary in September – has already restarted one production line and hopes to inaugurate the modernized sections in the middle of next year. 

The project comes on top of an annual investment of €30 million (US$35.59 million) across Mondelēz’s eight other bakery production sites in France. 

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