Crosby Coffee has built a reputation across the Liverpool region as not only purveyors of excellent coffee, but as a business with an ethical approach and sustainability at its heart.
Overview
Investment: £160,000 business spend supported by £20,000 LCEI business grant
The Project: Investment into a new, larger capacity and more energy efficient coffee roaster
Carbon Savings: 25.96t CO2e per year | 389.4t CO2e over the 15-year lifespan of the equipment
Projected Financial Savings: £8,612.35 per year saving on energy bills
Over the past 10 years, the independent coffee roaster and café has expanded from its roots in Crosby to sites in Lark Lane and Liverpool City Centre and has grown its wholesale supply business and product portfolio.
Key to the business’s future plan is clean and sustainable growth. Having worked with the Low Carbon Eco-Innovatory (LCEI) previously to understand its carbon emissions, Crosby Coffee had already developed a Sustainable Growth Plan and identified the need to update a range of equipment to meet customer demand, support business growth, and reduce energy usage.
Central to this is their roasting facility. They identified a bespoke coffee roaster from a supplier in Copenhagen, with specialist thermodynamic properties that would be 100% faster and 20% larger in capacity. The new roaster would also be 70% more energy efficient than their current gas-fired roaster, utilising conductive energy and hot air heat retention, with gas consumption reduced by 1.7kWh per kg of coffee roasted.
In 2023 Crosby Coffee roasted 63,409kg of green coffee, with the new machine they expected to be able to roast 75,000kg of coffee per year.
LCEI researcher Dr Cameron Kelly compared the current and new machines using a base unit of 1kg of coffee. His calculations showed that the new roaster vastly reduced gas consumption, from 164,999.0kWh per year to 36,424.5kWh per year.
This equates to a carbon saving of 25.96 tonnes CO2e per year, the equivalent of driving an average-sized car 96,805 miles in the UK. Over the 15-year lifespan of the roaster, this equals a carbon saving of 389.4 tonnes CO2e.
In addition to carbon savings, Dr Kelly’s report showed there is likely to be a significant impact on utility bills once the new roaster is operational, with Crosby Coffee set to save approximately £8,612.35 per year.
Following Dr Kelly’s report, the LCEI team supported Crosby Coffee through the grant application process. The LCEI grant panel awarded Crosby Coffee £20,000 towards purchasing the roaster and the LCEI team were on hand for every stage through procurement, defrayal and drawdown of the grant funds.
The LCEI team will continue to work with Crosby Coffee to monitor ongoing carbon savings.
Mark Slinger, Crosby Coffee co-founder and director, said:
“Having a greater capacity for larger amounts of coffee to be roasted will create huge opportunities for growth whilst reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions. We will continue to grow organically, opening premises and building our wholesale and delivery services and other complimentary products and services to our customers.”
Low Carbon Eco-Innovatory (LCEI) is funded via the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as the lead authority.
A partnership between LJMU and University of Liverpool, LCEI offers low carbon assistance alongside match-funded grants of up to 50% for low carbon installations and equipment that will help LCR businesses to decarbonise.
The UK Shared Prosperity Fund provides £2.6 billion of funding for local investment by March 2025. The Fund aims to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK, investing in communities and place, supporting local business, and people and skills. For more information, visit UK Shared Prosperity Fund: prospectus – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).