Stefan Schreyögg, fourth-generation owner of Alps Coffee, explains how the company has refined the art of roasting with the help of IMA Petroncini.
Since Stefan Schreyögg joined his father, Peter Schreyögg, at the helm of Alps Coffee in 2020, he has steered the Italian brand towards significant business growth by leveraging its international experience and competence in coffee roasting alongside an intensification of global distribution channels.
For Stefan Schreyögg, this increased success signalled it was the ideal time to expand Alps Coffee’s international production capacity while maintaining its high-quality standards.
“Alps Coffee is a traditional family-run roasting company. Its history goes back to 1890, when my great-grandfather, the merchant Josef Schreyögg, established a specialty shop with colonial goods and coffees from all over the world. In the 1980s, the company increasingly specialised in coffee production and export business,” says Schreyögg.
“Today, our company produces a wide range of high-quality coffee. Our fine blends are gently roasted in a single-origin slow roasting process. From delicious espresso blends to coffee pods and special compositions for fully automatic machines and filter coffees, our range offers products to suit every taste and method of preparation. Numerous certifications in organic, Fairtrade, and food safety make us a modern roastery with a respectful approach to our environment.”
When Alps Coffee was looking to expand its production with a new modern, high-capacity coffee roasting plant, it required technology that would guarantee the quality and consistency of its coffee while also delivering energy efficiency.
“For us, top quality is not just a promise, but our creed. Over the decades, our family business has developed its own four-level quality model, which knows no compromise when it comes to perfection in the cup. We focus on premium green coffee, long roasting of single-origin coffees, individual composition of flavours, and ongoing quality control,” says Schreyögg.
“After examining the market and evaluating all options available, we chose to partner with IMA Petroncini as it was the ideal technical supplier for our needs.”
The solution Alps Coffee required was a drum roasting machine combined with a green and roasted coffee plant that could process a large production volume.
“When it came to upgrading our roasting technologies, IMA Petroncini’s TMR technology captured our attention for its high-quality manufacturing, great flexibility, and reliability to successfully create unlimited roasting profiles,” says Schreyögg.
The TMR Series is comprised of modular drum roasters, with a capacity to roast from 1000 to 3600 kilograms per hour. The modular roasters have layout flexibility and feature an external heat generation unit, which allows for high productivity and process reliability, enabling the roasters to perform a wide range of coffee roasting profiles.
“After multiple tests on the Petroncini TMR Lab Roaster at the IMA Coffee Lab, we decided to purchase the largest drum roaster with an energy-saving system on the market, the TMR 720, combined with a complete coffee processing plant,” says Schreyögg.
The TMR model can roast up to 720 kilograms per batch and has been specially designed for industrial productions that require high profitability and repeatability of the roasting processes during the various working stages.
“IMA Petroncini is a very successful and reliable partner, a company that combines its long experience in the sector with its vision focused on innovation and sustainability. We required a modern roasting plant with a large capacity, and its solid company knowledge and expert consultancy in plant engineering convinced us to launch the new project with them,” Schreyögg says.
Michelangelo Parro, Sales Area Manager at IMA Coffee Hub and Head of Product Management at IMA Petroncini, helped interpret Alps Coffee’s needs from the start.
“The first time I visited the company’s production site, I was really impressed by the attention Alps Coffee pays to the roasting of its premium coffee and the continuous quality control, from the origins of the raw coffee to the definition of the aroma into the cup,” Parro says.
“It is a source of great satisfaction for IMA Petroncini to partner with Alps Coffee. It is further confirmation of our ability to respond to customers who seek excellence not only in the cup, but also in the coffee production chain, with particular attention to the environment. Our technologies were able to meet the technical specifications of a company attentive to product quality and to the sustainability of production.”
Parro says TMR roasters guarantee superior roasting quality, reliability, and high energy-efficiency performance.
“The TMR 720 machine drastically reduces carbon emissions, guaranteeing emission parameters far below the limits set by European regulations. This is possible thanks to the use of a single burner, which also acts as a thermal afterburner, combined with the roasting control system, Orchestra, that is able to auto-tune the heat and airflow parameters to roast high-quality coffee with limited energy consumption,” he says.
Parro says IMA Petroncini provided a tailor-made, 360-degree solution for every aspect of the project, simplifying both development and management.
“The mutual collaboration was a natural consequence of the ideals we share with our client: the sustainability and ecological principles that belong to Alps Coffee are at the core of IMA’s developments. These, combined with our engineering perspective, facilitated a relationship of trust that was established from day one and has only improved,” says Parro.
“The state-of-the-art software applied to the TMR roaster models, combined with our competence in roasting, makes our solutions some of the best performing in the market. The precision and accuracy used in our roasters is based on the continuous improvement of our technology, responding to customer demands, and becoming increasingly sustainable. In fact, TMR roasters are the most environmentally conscious solutions on the market today.”
Schreyögg says the ability to roast sustainably with IMA Petroncini’s TMR 720 model underpins its commitment to operating with the environment in mind.
“Alps Coffee enforces a sustainable coffee production chain, and we believe technology plays an important part in contributing to this. By promoting a Fairtrade and organic product range, sustaining local smallholders, and using low-impact roasting technologies, Alps Coffee contributes to a more sustainable future while producing high-quality coffee,” says Schreyögg.
For more information, visit ima.it/coffee or alps-coffee.it
This article was first published in the May/June 2024 edition of Global Coffee Report. Read more HERE.