Coffee Processing Plant & Machinery Solutions (Instant Coffee & Coffee Powder Production)

Green coffee beans are received, lifted into storage and cleaned to remove dust, stones, string and metal before roasting.

Cleaned beans are roasted with hot air or in a heated drum. The beans darken, lose moisture and develop the flavour and aroma of coffee. The degree of roast (light, medium or dark) is set by how long the beans are kept in the roaster.

Roasted beans are discharged from the roaster and cooled with ambient air as they travel along a conveyor, so that roasting stops at the intended degree.

Roasted beans are ground. A coarse grind is used ahead of extraction for instant coffee; a finer grind is used for roast and ground coffee powder.

Ground coffee from different lots or roast degrees is blended to give a uniform product. Chicory is blended in at this stage where a coffee and chicory mix is being made.

Blended coffee powder is dosed into pouches or jars, flushed with nitrogen to limit contact with air, check-weighed and packed into cartons.

Ground roasted coffee is contacted with hot water to dissolve the soluble solids, giving a coffee extract and leaving the spent grounds behind. Batch extraction is carried out in heated vessels. Continuous percolation-column extraction is a process-only stage; no catalogue machine is listed for it.

The extract is screened to remove spent grounds and coarse particles before it is concentrated. Removal of the finest particles by centrifuge is a process-only stage; no catalogue machine is listed for it.

Water is removed from the filtered extract to raise its solids content before drying, either by evaporation under vacuum or by freeze concentration.

➜ Process-only stage: no catalogue machine is listed for this step.

Volatile aroma compounds are stripped from the freshly ground coffee and from the extract before it is concentrated, so that they are not lost during evaporation. The condensed aroma is held and added back to the concentrated extract before drying.

➜ Process-only stage: no catalogue machine is listed for this step.

The concentrate is dried to a powder. In spray drying the concentrate is sprayed into a stream of hot air and the droplets dry into a fine powder. In freeze drying the concentrate is frozen and the ice is removed under vacuum, leaving porous granules.

Spray-dried powder is re-wetted with steam or water so that fine particles bind into larger granules, then re-dried and cooled. Granulated instant coffee dissolves more readily and is less dusty than fine powder. The re-wetting stage is process-only; re-drying of the granules is done in a fluid bed dryer.

➜ Optional stage, used when a granular instant coffee is wanted rather than a fine powder.

Instant coffee powder or granules are dosed into sachets, pouches or jars, flushed with nitrogen, check-weighed and packed into cartons for retail or bulk supply.