Scale determination for coffee roasting grinding and packing industry Different perspectives are taken into consideration

while defining the commercial size for coffee roasting, grinding and packing factory. The first criteria is to see the completeness of the must

present machines. The time spent in one shift or eight hours for a critical operation is also taken into account. The installed capacity of the machinery involved is also a key factor while deciding the scale. The objective of DBE to finance medium and large scale industries is also given due attention. Main machineries for coffee roasting, grinding and packaging industry There are four main operations in roast coffee production. The process starts with cleaning and grading the green beans. Then roasting operation continues followed by grinding and packaging operations. The most critical operation is the roasting process. The main machineries in the above mentioned operations are listed below. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Vibrating screen Coffee blender Coffee roaster Coffee grinder Destoners Packaging machine

The most important machine is the coffee roaster and it influences the overall production capacity. Industrials roasters come in different capacities ranging from 25kg per batch to 400kg per batch and some custom made special roasters even go beyond up to 50 tons of roasted coffee on per day. Data from ministry of industry shows that in the current Ethiopian context, roasting capacity of some facilities ranges from 21 tons per year to 4160 tons per year. Basis assumptions taken i. ii. iii. iv. One shift and eight working hours per day. The factory works 12 months per year. Roasting one batch of coffee takes from 5-30 minutes and we take the maximum 30 minutes. Minimum amount of one batch of green coffee bean is 100 kg.

From assumptions above, the minimum capacity for roast coffee facility should be 200kg per hour. Experiences gathered from visited factories like TO.MO.CA and Alem coffee is taken as a bench mark and hence the result agrees with the benchmark values.