Hortons building Ancaster roasting plant
$30 million operation will employ 50
April 29, 2009
Lisa Grace Marr
http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/556902
ANCASTER - Tim Hortons is back in the city where it got its start to brew up another first: a coffee roasting plant built from scratch.
Company officials were on hand for an exclusive tour with The Hamilton Spectator yesterday of the $30-million, 74,000-square-foot plant still under construction.
“We have quite a long history in Hamilton, Store No. 1 is here,” said Don Schroeder, president and CEO, in an interview. “We also had great co-operation from the City of Hamilton in locating here.”
Tim Hortons bought the property in the industrial park on Cormorant Road in January. It owns another coffee roasting plant in Rochester, N.Y., bought in 2001 that was mothballed and needed renovations.
Together, the two coffee roasting plants will give Tim Hortons the capacity to produce 75 per cent of its own coffee. The rest is handled by third-party roasting companies.
The company has started recruiting about 50 full-time staff, and has begun hiring managers.
It’s hopeful news that comes the same day as Statistics Canada’s grim announcement the number of people applying for Employment Insurance benefits in the Hamilton/Burlington area jumped 83 per cent between February 2008 and February 2009.
Mayor Fred Eisenberger said city staff worked diligently along with the local utility companies to help the company start construction.
He said Tim Hortons’ new plant is a shot in the arm for the city’s beleaguered manufacturing sector.
“What it means is that manufacturing in the city is … a broad sector,” he said. “Jobs in today’s economy is what everyone is focusing on.”
Schroeder said Hamilton was chosen after a lengthy search for the right site with the right access to transportation routes and the company’s main distribution centre in Guelph.
Schroeder said building the plant is “a dream come true.”
“Now we can truly say we control our coffee from tree to cup.”
There are few brands as closely identified with one particular flavour as Tim Hortons.
The plant is an effort to improve quality control — “to raise the bar higher”for that Tim Hortons coffee taste.
Schroeder said one of the toughest things about getting that taste is that it’s built on an agricultural commodity affected by a variety of factors.
“Bottom line is every cup must taste the same in every store every day. That’s a significant challenge,” he said. “People often say to us, ‘There’s something different in your coffee.’ I say, ‘You’re right. It’s called TLC.’”
The beans come from Central and South America and are premium arabica beans.
Jim Wiant, vice-president of manufacturing and designer of the plant, said the Ancaster facility will also have two laboratories (one is known as the cupping room) for research and development.
Given the importance of those beans, this is the nerve centre of the operation.
It’s run by a team of international flavour sharpshooters who can detect any drop in quality or assortment of the beans coming in the back door.
About 65 per cent of the green beans (unroasted) will eventually come to the Hamilton plant, with the remainder going to the Rochester plant.
Once the beans arrive at the loading docks, they’re stored and then sorted to a recipe as guarded as Kentucky Fried Chicken’s.
The sorted beans are then either shipped out for roasting in “super sacks” or kept in the plant, said Wiant.
After roasting, the beans are cooled by water slightly, demoisturized, put through a grinder and then packed at a mind-boggling speed of 1,100 pouches a minute, with each pouch representing one pot of coffee.
Upstairs features a large lunch room, washrooms, offices and a conference room overlooking the production floor for training Tim Hortons franchisees.
The plant is scheduled to open in the fall.
Wiant said the plant was built with an eye to future expansion: many exterior walls can be easily removed and there are 1.6 hectares available for even more construction.
“When you build a plant like this, you take the long view of the community,” said Wiant.
“Hamilton is a good place to be in. People here have a good work ethic.”
By The Numbers
Facility has two nine-metre-tall roasters
Once operational, it will keep four weeks of green beans in inventory, stored over 25,000 square feet of space on three-metre-tall pallets.
There are eight loading docks, four in, four out.
There are 13-metre-tall silos of green beans holding the secret recipe for Tim Hortons coffee.
It’s built on four hectares of land.
Construction costs: $30 million.
Will employ 50 people.
Plant is 74,000 square feet.
It will churn out 1,100 pouches a minute on the high speed packer (one pouch makes a pot of coffee).
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