In the 1950s and 1960s, Niro A/S, which later became part of GEA
Group, began to pioneer improved extraction, spray drying and agglomeration for
instant coffee production.
Today, Niro has developed processes and systems
to improve virtually every stage of instant coffee production, helping to
ensure that consumers around the World are able to savour the full aromatic
delights of the World’s favourite beverage. Niro designs and builds entire
production process lines for instant coffee producers all over the World. Every
part of the process is designed to achieve the customer’s desired targets for
quality, quantity and consistency. Though largely unseen by the coffee
consumers who buy the World’s annual consumption of 950 billion cups of instant
coffee, Niro play a key role in bringing them their favourite drink.
Instant coffee comes in three forms; freeze dried, spray-dried and
liquid coffee extract. The process of making all three types of instant coffee
starts once the beans have been roasted and ground. The coarsely ground coffee
is then mixed with water that has been heated to approximately 200°C in large
extraction columns. Clarifiers are then used to separate out the insoluble
components that would otherwise end up as residues in the cup.
After
concentration, the extract can be dried in either a spray dryer or a freeze
dryer. As the World leader in these technologies, Niro coffee processing
systems produces unmatched, top quality coffee powders, agglomerated coffee and
coffee granules.
A wide range of tailor-made and standard design spray
dryers produce coffee powder and the freeze dryers deliver the granules.
Granules are formed through agglomerating the spray dried coffee powder in a
two-stage, wetting and drying process. To ensure that the instant coffee,
whether in powder or granule form, retains the taste and scent of fresh coffee,
precise aroma recovery systems are put in place to ensure that aroma released
during the concentration process is captured and returned into the finished
product.
Creativity and social change
Coffee has proved to be a social beverage over which to form friendships or
discover love. Many have also found it to help them think more clearly,
creatively, and independently – Bach, Beethoven and even Balzac composed music
with inspiration from coffee.
The American and French Revolutions were
both plotted in 18th century coffee houses. More recently, coffee has
stimulated a notable – but almost entirely peaceful – social revolution in
Japan. Throughout the long history of Japan, the people of Japan have been
devoted to drinking tea, developing in the process the famously elaborate tea
ceremony. Since the mid-1990s there has been a significant shift in demand
towards coffee and, today, coffee is more popular than tea in both volume and
value.
One of the prime movers in this taste shift has been Starbucks®,
whose coffee shop concept has been successfully capturing the Japanese
consumers’ imagination.
It appears that Japanese women have taken the
Starbucks idea to heart and this has prompted them to emulate the ‘real’ coffee
experience at home. Consequently, there has been a substantial rise in demand
for fresh ground coffee – which gives a sense of authenticity but does not
require consumers to grind their own beans.
Instant coffee still
accounts for the bulk of Japan’s coffee sales. The lucrative RTD
(ready-to-drink) market is very popular with Japanese commuters and city
workers. This coffee/milk/sugar mixture is sold in a sealed cardboard or a can
container.
The current target for this type of coffee is China, where
companies hope to replicate the Japanese experience of conversion from tea to
coffee.
Fresh or instant: Who drinks what?
Consumption statistics for fresh and instant coffee reveal an extraordinary
degree of variation between different markets.
Canadians and North
Americans are devoted to fresh coffee, with ov er 95% preferring it to the
instant variety. As would be expected from a major producer area, Latin America
is a strong market for fresh coffee, with just 10% of consumers buying instant
coffee. In Africa and the Middle East, 86% of coffee drinkers prefer fresh
coffee.
In Western Europe, 90% prefer fresh coffee – although the UK
reverses the trend, with 90% of consumers opting for the instant variety. This
picture changes in Eastern Europe, where only 65% of buyers purchase fresh
coffee.
In the Asia-Pacific area, the figure for fresh coffee buyers
drops to 46%. The Australasians are in a league of their own, with 79% of
consumers preferring instant coffee.
The broad picture from these
statistics show that instant coffee holds a strong position in countries where
tea has been the long-standing traditional beverage.
Comparative market
shares for spray dried and freeze dried coffee reveal that, as a general rule,
the markets with more disposable income are shifting towards freeze-dried
granules, whereas sales of spray dried powder coffees are growing in the
emerging economies. This position reflects the lower cost base – and hence
lower sale price – of spray dried instant coffee.
Adding value through technology
Niro is a leading supplier of process equipment to the World’s coffee
producers, helping to convert the raw beans into the aromatic drink that
consumers enjoy all around the World. Niro produces process solutions for the
following coffee production stages:
Green bean
treatment: systems for cleaning, blending and storing harvested beans.
Roast bean treatment: systems for controlling storage
conditions and industrial-scale grinding
Extraction:
fast instant coffee (FIC) extraction systems, batch percolators and continuous
counter-current extractors
Extract treatment: aroma
recovery systems and clarifiers for removing unwanted residue
Concentration: falling film evaporators, plate
evaporators, freeze concentrators and membrane filtration systems
Drying: spray driers, continuous freeze driers and
batch freeze driers
Agglomeration: re-wetting systems
for achieving dustless powders and customized granules.