Corporate Feature     

Published: Feb 15, 2023
Updated: Feb 15, 2023

Vintage Coffee

Spreading coffee gospel globally

Vintage Coffee and Beverages Ltd (VCBL) has expanded its global footprint and is currently in a massive expansion mode, having entered the likes of Russia, the CIS countries, Africa , S-E Asia and Australia.

The business has been growing in right earnest from late 2018, with good product development and customer acquisition, and has earned a reputation for quality. Plans are on to enhance capacity utilisation to 100%, procure green coffee at optimal prices with six- month supply visibility at any time, renew existing contracts and bag additional orders from new markets; have uninterrupted production and dispatches, and also focus on domestic sales.

NEXT TO OIL

Coffee is the world’s second most traded commodity after oil. Consumption of coffee has been increasing by over 2% every year at 163 million 60 kg bags of green coffee. The global coffee segments are Conventional Coffee and Instant Coffee. Instant Coffee is made for convenience and is much higher in terms of value. This segment has been growing at around 9% yoy. Economically developing countries are the biggest consumers. There is a big market in the private label segment of Instant Coffee in which Vintage can comfortably expand.

According to Mr. Balakrishna Tati, manging director, VCBL currently has prime real estate of 23 acres (11 hectares) at Rachur Village near Veldanda off the Srisailam highway in Telangana. The built-up area of the factory is about 150,000 sq ft, with state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities for Instant Coffee along with a huge storage facility for Green Coffee and finished products. The plant is equipped with state-of-the-art machinery such as: a Probat profile roaster with hi-tech turbo roasting from Brazil; a fully automated extraction system to capture rich aroma in the product and to deliver a consistent product; and the best aroma recovery technology so as to add back aroma into the final product to give a rich cup taste.

TAKING ON TEA

In today’s changing world, people especially in urban areas in the north, which generally comprises tea drinkers, are patronising cafes for hangouts and meetings. Also, coffee is a beverage which is offered for special occasions and is slowly increasing in consumption in traditional tea-drinking areas. The population of the country is very young — about 60% is between the ages of 16 and 60 with the mean age being a very young 28 years. So, products and services and communication have to be very contemporary. Hence, the company’s thrust on the message of coffee.