The new Luckin Coffee roastery complex in Kunshan, Jiangsu province. All images obtained from a Luckin Coffee press release.
Chinese coffee roasting and retail giant Luckin Coffee this week opened a massive $120 million roasting plant in Kunshan.
Located between the cities of Shanghai and Suzhou, the new roastery in the Jiangsu province boasts approximately 53,000 square meters (573,000 square feet) of interior space, with the capacity to produce about 30,000 tons of coffee annually, according to the company.
The facility is Luckin’s second major production roastery in China, joining an approximately 45,000-square-meter (480,000-square-foot) plant in Fujian, which opened in 2021. The company, which also recently opened a green coffee processing center in Yunnan province, says the roasteries combined give the company the capacity to produce more than 45,000 tons of coffee per year, or approximately 750,000 60-kilo sacks of coffee.
To put than number in perspective, it is roughly the equivalent of the total amount of coffee produced each year in Kenya or El Salvador, according to the latest reports from the USDA’s Foreign Agriculture Service.
“This will enable the company to respond more quickly and accurately to consumer demands, as well as fast delivery of high-quality coffee beans to its nationwide stores,” Luckin Coffee said in a company announcement of the new opening.
Luckin Coffee currently has more than 16,000 stores throughout China, according to the company, making it the largest domestic coffee chain ahead of competitors such as Starbucks (approximately 6,800 stores, as of late 2023) and Cotti Coffee (approximately 7,000 stores, as of March 2024). By the third quarter of 2023, Luckin Coffee was opening an average of 16.5 stores per day.
China overtook the United States as the largest coffee shop market in the world last year, according to a World Coffee Portal report.
Comments? Questions? News to share? Contact DCN’s editors here.
Related Posts
Comment