As you pass the first doors onto the warehouse floor, the first thing you notice about Westrock Coffee’s new facility is the space itself. Far on the other side of the room, a production line is humming along making the first batches of RTD product to come out of the 524,000 square foot, $315 million hub at the centerpiece of Westrock’s ambitious goal to transform from a high-volume importer and roaster to a complete coffee services master brand. The empty real estate itself underlies an essential fact of the plant: this is built for the long-term.
As documented in BevNET magazine earlier this year, Westrock’s facility is a high-stakes gamble for the family owned company, which went public via a SPAC merger in 2022. Its recent Q2 earnings report underlined the urgency of making this experiment work: a $17.8 million loss on the back of a 7.3% sales decline, which narrowed full-year guidance. Still, CEO Scott Ford pointed to the positive: multi-serve bottles and cans were finally coming off the line at Conway, and the clawback to growth was well underway. The plant sits within an unassuming business park in Conway, a city about 25 minutes outside of Little Rock that’s home to Central Arkansas University. But inside the facility doors, however, nothing is unassuming. The massive space houses massive equipment: silos with collective capacity in excess of one million pounds of green coffee, a pair of Scolari Roasters churning through 360 kg per batch (running 8 hour shifts six days per week), a canning line capable of doing 1,600 units in just 45 minutes. The calculation is simple: by investing heavily early on in equipment and pre-selling capacity (about 75% of which is now booked), Westrock will have the efficiency and infrastructure in place to rapidly commercialize and realize dividends -- at which point the plant can scale with an additional four to six packaging lines. Though relatively small compared to other rooms in the sprawling plant, Westrock’s R&D department, under the guidance of director Stephanie Gonzalez, is perhaps the key component of the entire operation. Other facilities can execute many of the same manufacturing processes, but having seasoned in-house product development allows the company to enhance its value at both the top and bottom of the funnel. The plant’s batching system operates up to four lines simultaneously, allowing retort-required products to be developed in nine months. For non-retort, samples can be produced in as little as two to three weeks. At the other end of the spectrum, it provides greater fine-tuning controls for brands looking to dial-in unique flavor notes and dairy/alt-dairy ingredients. Issues can be fixed or iterated over the course of small-batch production runs. Westrock’s success may depend more on external factors, though, than their ability to pump our products. Americans love their coffee as much as ever but increased competition from energy drinks, improved in-store coffee programs and other factors have squeezed the category over the past year; sales of iced coffee (-5.1%) and cold brew (-30%) have fallen in the last 52-weeks, though refrigerated sales are growing, according to NielsenIQ data In the months ahead, the excitement and newness around the Conway facility will die down as it gets down to the business at hand, and, as it prefers, Westrock recedes into the background. Its moves of the last few years have been expensive and highly publicized, exchanging the temporary pain for the potential long-term gains. Now with a license to hunt, it’s hoping Conway can start producing profits along with the cold brew. | 
