Lavazza North America, part of global Italian coffee company Lavazza Group, has begun construction of its first coffee roasting and packing plant in the United States. The new plant is slated to open in October 2021 and will serve the US market.
The plant is an expansion of the Lavazza Professional facility in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which will integrate existing and new capabilities for Lavazza to produce roasted and ground coffee in the US, adding 1000 square feet to the 18,000-square-foot facility. Strategically the new plant will create the possibility to increase the business, to be more reactive in the US market, and increase customer satisfaction.
“North America continues to be a strategic growth market for Lavazza Group and opening this facility in the US will sharpen our competitive edge,” says Davide Riboni, President & CEO Business Unit Americas for Lavazza. “We will more efficiently service our current customers and offer incentives to attract new ones.”
Until now, all Lavazza roasted and ground coffee for the US market was sourced from Italy, positioning the new plant to reduce Lavazza’s carbon footprint through reduced shipping, in line with the group’s “roadmap to zero” that aims to completely neutralise Lavazza’s carbon footprint by the end of 2030. The West Chester facility is a LEED Gold site, is zero landfill, and the first site in the Lavazza Group to achieve ISO 45001 certification. In the expansion, Lavazza will maintain the same environmental standards and history at the site.
Products from West Chester will fulfill all the quality standards of Lavazza brand, aimed at providing to consumers a product which matches the brand’s Italian taste. Lavazza is an Italian company established in 1895 in Turin and it has been owned by the Lavazza family for four generations, combining desire to bring its authentic coffee experience around the globe preserving the Italian roots.
“This is a very important step for the Lavazza Group and for its future development in the United States, a country that has always been of fundamental importance to us,” says Eleuterio Quagliarini, Group Chief Operations Officer for Lavazza. “In addition, the investment is made within a production facility that we acquired few years ago, which immediately proved to be the ideal context for developing this new Lavazza reality in the US, principally thanks to the passion and expertise of the people who work there.”
Lavazza Group currently has nine production plants in six countries (three in Italy, one in France, US, United Kingdom, Canada, and India).