nyheter & berättelser

The first roast in June 2017 marked the start of our new roastery in Länna, south of Stockholm, which besides its custom-built speciality coffee roasting process also houses our  green coffee storage, warehouse of finished goods, office workspace and visitors’ area for all people sharing our vision of bringing better coffee to the people.

Text by Anders Boajé

The dream of building the most modern speciality coffee roastery in Europe was more than a decade old once it was finally realised, as we started dreaming of this quite soon after Johan & Nyström was started back in 2004. Our first roastery, located in Tullinge south of Stockholm, started out small with a tiny room for a small roaster, a hand-packing station, and a desk for admin work. With the rapid growth of Johan & Nyström and our speciality coffee revolution, we quickly expanded to adjacent rooms in the old factory building where we resided and stepwise custom built a roastery to our own liking. There was lots of charm, mistakes, learnings and “thermal events” (a.k.a. fires).

Soon enough, we realized that the old factory building had its physical limitations and that our dreams were much larger. So, we started planning for building the roastery that would define Johan & Nyström for this and coming generations of coffee lovers, big words but in our view, this was the only roastery dream worth dreaming.  

Our Head of Production Joakim Ahlund actually designed the whole roastery process, in MS Paint.

After many years of planning, we could finally start building Europe’s most modern speciality coffee roastery in 2016 and completed the task by mid-2017. The ambition was not only to move our production and team to a new facility, but to enable an immediate doubling of coffee volumes since we had been given the responsibility for all of Espresso House’s coffee, serving some 1 million guests daily in 500 cafés, and to prepare the roastery for doubling these combined volumes many times over in the coming years and decades.

As a workplace, we want the roastery to be an open and inviting place that encourages the teamwork that is essential for delivering speciality coffee with a strong connection to our producers in origins across the world.

• Full flexibility with every new roast batch: every 12 minutes a roast batch is completed and a new one begins, for which we have full flexibility to blend green beans before or after roasting, send beans to any roaster, use the grinder or bypass for whole beans, and send any batch to any of our packaging machines. This enables full flexibility for every batch and enables us to always roast the coffee on order and deliver freshly roasted coffee.

• Full traceability of every coffee bean’s journey: with our automated transport system we have eliminated all manual handling steps while also introduced lots of checkpoints with data capture along the way so that we can trace any green coffees and roast batches completed in minute detail.

• Full transparency along the roasting process: all visitors can follow the roasting process and interact with the production staff, there are no hidden steps.

For a visitor, we want you to feel welcomed to share our vision of bringing better coffee to the people and we happily share all our knowledge from origin travels, coffee buying, roasting process, packaging, and delivery to all that are interested. The roastery has visits daily from customers, partners, coffee producers and coffee-interested consumers. Some come for the experience, some to be educated on espresso machines, some come to discuss coffee blends and some to help us develop further – but all should leave with fond memories of having visited a fantastic roastery, tasted great coffee and met some truly passionate coffee lovers. 

Att besöka ett land som specialkaffehandlare är något helt annat än att besöka det som turist. En av mina kollegor sa till mig inför min första resa: ”Att resa med kaffet är att få se vardagen.” Och det ligger något i det. Jag har turistat runt i världen, men aldrig kommit lika nära kulturerna och människorna som när jag varit med på besök till våra kaffeproducenter.

Text: Jonas Hult

It goes without saying that the past year has been very challenging, to say the least. For us at Johan & Nyström, restrictions and regulations have led to a drop in sales and volume together with many uncertainties about what’s laying ahead. However, that’s nothing compared to the uncertainties that coffee producers have been facing this year. Some of the challenges they have been facing and questions that they have been asking themselves are; Will the buyers/roasters even be there after the pandemic is over? Will they own up to their contract or will they default? If they are, will the coffee get shipped in time?

This past year we’ve seen massive disruptions in the logistical chain, which is crucial for coffee. Lack of containers, congestions in ports, not enough vessels, higher shipping costs all happening at the same time, in some sort of “perfect logistical storm”. Even if producers get the coffee out, what about next year? What necessary investments can be made in the farm? What investments can be postponed? Are they forced to sell the coffee to the lowest bidder at a loss to simply cover our losses the best they can?

As said earlier, we’ve seen a drop in sales compare to previous years. Obviously, that leads to less coffee being used and subsequently, less coffee that can be bought from producers. This year, it was especially three producers that were facing lower volumes from us at Johan & Nyström. When working with producers for more than 10 years, giving that sort of news basically makes you feel like the worst person in the world. Needless to say, you try your hardest to come up with a solution to at least ease the blow.

Together with the producers, we tried to find the best way going forward. Surely, us buying as much coffee that we could this year was a given. However, no one benefits from us over stocking on coffee. A big problem for many producers is access to finance, and often (ridiculously) high interest rates. Over 15% isn’t unusual, given the lack of collateral. A signed contract can act as such. That’s why, the second step was extending the length of the contract, to reach into 2023 and 2024.

The third thing was to pre-finance part of next year’s purchase. Meaning that we pay the producers now, for something that we will receive in 12-14 months. I.e., we’re paying for coffee that doesn’t even exist yet.

On a personal note, I’m very proud that we were able to do this, in the middle of a pandemic given the risks that comes with it, as well as the strain it puts on our liquidity in times when basically all other investments are at a stop. I also realize that this might seem like a big pad on the back for ourselves. In part, that’s true. Because I think it’s important for everyone working at Johan & Nyström to feel proud of what we’re doing. However, this is also a big pad on the back for all of you who’s buying our coffee. Without your support, it’s impossible for us to support the producers. So, a socially distanced toast to you!

Hur paketerar man ett av världens dyraste kaffen på ett sätt som tydligt förmedlar den exceptionella kvaliteten? I samband med dagens mycket limiterade släpp av Los Lajones Geisha från Panama, lanserar vi även en helt ny design som gör just det. Nyfiken på den kreativa processen och vägen dit? Läs mer här.

Varför mal vi finare när vi brygger en espresso? Varför skall det vi grövre när det är en presskanna? Vad gör för grovt eller för finmalt kaffe med smaken? Detta skall vår käre Jonas Hult berätta för dig.