Drury maximizes productivity without damaging beans
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Rising global demand for espresso coffee has had a dramatic impact on requests from restaurants and bars for high quality coffee products. Leading industry suppliers such as The Drury Tea & Coffee Company, located in central London, have been able to meet these high production demands by leveraging innovative manufacturing solutions. Since replacing its manual coffee bean handling operations with an automated industrial vacuum conveying system, Drury has greatly improved production while reducing overhead costs and preserving the integrity of its flavorful coffee beans.
"We have seen the market for espresso booming and customers are becoming more discerning - filter coffee is no longer as popular as it once was," says Phil Millard, Production Manager at Drury. In order to meet this increasing customer demand, Drury needed an automated conveying solution that could transport a large quantity of freshly roasted beans into its packaging machine without causing damage in the process. "Although we were eager to meet the growing requests from our customers, we were careful to not sacrifice our reputation for providing high quality products."
In the company's quest to find a less laborious, safer and more efficient transfer system, Drury replaced its existing manual processes with an automated industrial vacuum conveyor (IC33) from PIAB. The company was particularly impressed with the results demonstrated at PIAB's conveying test laboratory. "The decision to purchase was easy once we saw how the conveyors could maximize productivity whilst maintaining product quality," says Millard.
Since the installation of the conveyor Drury has been able to transfer one full-time employee to a more productive task, which has drastically reduced the labour costs of the operation and improved welfare for employees. Additionally, because the hygienic conveyor is completely enclosed, there is no risk of contamination or dust generation, thus improving the overall health and safety aspects of the process.
The freshly roasted coffee beans that Drury produces are now handled in a way that benefits both the company and its consumers. "PIAB's conveyors have provided us with a more economical approach to our mission of offering some of the very best coffees. We look forward to our continued partnership with the hopes of carrying on this tradition," says Millard.
19 June 2006
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