Taylors eyes future coffee investment

The Harrogate-based firm started the manufacture of coffee capsules for Nestlé’s Nescafé Nespresso machines earlier this year.

A significant amount of money had been invested in the development and production of the capsules, which are on sale in Sainsbury, Waitrose and Amazon, said Hennighan.

Coffee pods are a quick way for consumers to make fresh-tasting coffee at home, without using granules or having to grind their own coffee beans.

Supermarket coffee pod sales surged by 52% in 2014 and were worth £104M. More than 310M cups of coffee were made using pods in 2014, according to data from market analyst IRI.

Huge growth ​

Taylors of Harrogate brand manager Liz Skillbeck said: “Coffee capsules have enjoyed huge growth in recent years, driven by the increasing importance of convenience for busy consumers, paired with a growing appreciation and understanding of what makes a good cup of coffee.”​

It took Taylors a long time to decide on pursuing Nespresso-compatible capsules, Hennighan added. “We wanted to ensure we aligned ourselves with quality and it was also simply the most popular machine on the market and had the highest and best reputation.​

“Coffee capsules are possibly one of the most innovative things going on in the industry at the moment.”​

The coffee for the capsules is roasted at Taylor's 14,000m² production site in Harrogate, where tea and coffee accounts for a combined annual throughput of 17,000t a year.

Once roasted, the coffee is packed by a co-packer, which Hennighan refused to name. “We are roasting the coffee here on site and ship it to the co-packer by truck. That’s something we want to bring in-house eventually there is a timescale to do that, but I can't say what it is.​

‘Lots of investment’ ​

“There’s been lots of investment in the development of the capsules and the next step will be investing in machinery.​

“We also had to invest time in getting it right, as we had to adjust our roasting process to ensure that the coffee coming out was the quality that we wanted.”​

Although Taylors had invested in the production of capsules, Hennighan claimed microground coffee instant coffee with a small percentage of roast and ground coffee in it was also regaining interest from consumers.

“Microground coffee started off really well a couple of years ago and then it seems to have flattened out a bit since, but there are companies out there tweaking their recipes and I think there may be another push in that area very soon,”​ said Hennighan.