Popularity and market demand filters down the supply chain, placing immense pressure on suppliers, roasters and grinders as they try to keep pace with consumer demand for convenience and new innovations.
A company which has undertaken investment to cater for these varying market forces is Masteroast, one of the UK’s largest independent coffee roaster/packers. Its reputation for high-quality coffee and innovative packaging has allowed it to grow sales in a highly competitive retail sector. Following a recent investment in process and filling for coffee capsules, pressure was building to reduce cost and increase throughput on the packaging line. Masteroast’s problem was that customers wanted different packaging styles to create differentiation in the market. Standard 1 x 10 tube formats for Nespresso compatible capsules are well recognised, but for a point of difference for higher-end products, a unique format with more drama and customer engagement was required. To take this next step, Masteroast explored the machine-builder market for a suitable secondary packaging machinery supplier. They tasked Cama to develop a solution to its coffee packaging requirements.
Andy Fawkes, managing director at Masteroast explains, ‘We’ve held a unique position in the market and we are known for our ability to offer flexibility, short-run capabilities and high levels of quality. When we moved into the capsule market, we knew we had to exploit automation for capacity and cost reasons – but we did not want to give up flexibility. Cama offered us significant coffee packaging experience and we knew it was well established in this market. Its capabilities to deal with short runs and different packaging formats ticked all our requirements.’

‘Working in collaboration with our dedicated packaging design department, Masteroast developed a new box design that comprises a top opening tray with an insert that allows the capsules to be presented - like a gift box. This approach allows us to offer a packaging format with a sense of occasion – created by a theatrical product reveal of the contents of the carton,’ Mark Brooker director of Cama UK points out.

'Cama helped us,' Fawkes adds. 'We knew the format we wanted, but at the time it did not exist. The packaging design team helped us with technical advice, relating to the best types of cardboard, how it was folded and manufactured. The Cama team also talked
to our supply chain, helping us to bring it all together.’

From a technology perspective, Masteroast needed a machine-based solution that could package tubes and trays, using a continuous stream of individual products fed from a downstream capsule filling and sealing machine. The machine had to offer easy changeover, to rapidly adapt to the different style production runs. Coupled with delivering the necessary flexibility, this would also make significant contributions to OEE. Cama’s solution was its Break Through Generation (BTG) machines that incorporates precision feeding of the aluminium capsules, robotic manipulation of capsules into a single row for tubes or a double row for trays, before presenting them to a Cama CL intermittentmotion side load cartoner.

The key to the flexibility of the line is Cama’s MN (‘Y’ shaped) robot at the infeed. With the innovative design of the robot’s pick
head, the facility can minimise the changeover time between the different packaging formats. Both these run at 120 capsules per minute. ‘Cama has experience and market knowhow,’ Fawkes elaborates. ‘The team ended up holding our hand throughout the entire process – from design through rollout and through to implementation. This was a huge comfort factor. With anything new, there’s always the fear that you don’t get what you ask for. Cama understand our needs, namely flexibility and reliability, which was so ​essential to us.

Our visit started from our base in San Pedro Sula to the Puerto Cortes just north of San Pedro Sula. The Port manages the largest volume of traffic in Central America, moving not only all of the coffee produced in Honduras but a good volume from Guatemala as well. 

​The following day we headed inland to Santa Rosa de Copa to visit one of our principal suppliers, Coffee Planet Corporation. Douglas Urquia and his team made us feel very welcome, providing us with a tour of the milling facility and explaining the philosophy behind the business. We were then presented with a mix of past crop Microlots as well as some of the initial harvest of this season, which was a fascinating exercise. There was a clear favourite on the table which was a pulped natural displaying a “marzipan” flavour as coined by Karen Stockwell.

Omar Rodriquez a 4th Generation Coffee farmer and General Manager of Capucas cooperative, then lead the team up the mountain and provided some insights in Small Holder farming as well as Coop management. By the time we the cabins where we would be spending the night, it was already dark. In the morning the team awoke from their cabins which we realised were right in the middle of the coffee farms and presented with spectacular views as well as a hearty breakfast. 

​An early start into the mountains to see the coffee growing at high altitudes, seeing the fertilizers created as part of their projects in use on the coffee plants and also a coffee plant which has sustained coffee leaf rust damage(La Roya) and the devastating effects it can have on a farm should it spread to the rest of the crop, something all too real for these farmers still recovering from the widespread damage this caused in the early part of the decade and something they are working hard to keep at bay for the sakes of their families livelihood and future. We tried our hand at cherry picking and manually wet processing the cherries we picked to see just how labour intensive the process is, then we got to plant our very own saplings and name them so that in 2 years’ time they will bare their fruits.