The US coffee roaster’s sales continue to rise as it prepares to launch a 524,000sq ft roasting to ready-to-drink facility in the first quarter of next year
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Westrock Coffee achieved 10% year-on-year sales growth to $205m in its first quarter | Photo credit: Westrock Coffee
Westrock Coffee has credited its single-serve coffee segment as driving first quarter sales and says it is ‘on-track’ to launch the first ready-to-drink (RTD) products from its new Conway facility at the start of 2024.
The Arkansas-based coffee roaster achieved 10% year-on-year sales growth to $205m in the three months ended 31 March 2023.
Revenues in its Beverage Solutions segment, comprising coffee, tea, flavours and extracts, contributed $181m of total sales, 22% higher than the same quarter in 2022, with single-serve coffee cited as a ‘key contributor’, achieving 44% volume growth.
Total consolidated gross profit was 11% lower than the same quarter of 2022, at $34m, which Westrock Coffee attributed to ‘unanticipated production down-time' at the start of 2023 as the company integrated a new enterprise resource planning system at its extract manufacturing facility in North Carolina.
The new system ensures all internal processes operate on a single platform. Westrock Coffee’s first quarter net loss totalled $4.3m, compared with $4.7m in the same period of 2022.
“We are pleased to report our first quarter results which continue to reflect the key product expansions of our growing platform, even as we work hard to bring through all of the potential EBITDA into our results. As 2023 begins to take shape, we are focused on our two major initiatives of successfully launching our Conway extract and ready-to-drink facility in the first quarter of 2024 and continuing the maturation of our existing operations to be able to capture the profitability intrinsically available from our growing large-scale, global customer base,” said Scott T. Ford, CEO, Westrock Coffee.
Westrock Coffee began upgrading its new roasting to RTD facility in Conway, Arkansas, in November 2022. Once fully operational in 2024, the 524,000 square foot facility will be the largest roasting to RTD operation of its kind.
The coffee roaster is also building a new distribution facility in tandem with the manufacturing plant to improve the reach and efficiency of its coffee, tea, and RTD product distribution.
Westrock Coffee reported ‘record annual results’ for 2022, with net sales growth of 24% in the 12 months ended 31 December 2022 to reach $868m.