Q&A with Wim Abbing of PROBAT-Werke

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By Dan Shryock

Wim Abbing, c.e.o. and managing partner of PROBAT-Werke, oversees a fourth-generation family business that has grown during the past 140 years to become an industry leader in coffee roasting machines, roller mills, and ancillary equipment. PROBAT operates subsidiaries in Brazil, India, Italy, the Philippines and the United States in addition to its headquarters in Germany. The company employs 800 wordwide with 550 in Germany. Abbing spoke with STiR Tea & Coffee International during the Host International Hospitality Exhibition in Milan, Italy.

STiR: You’re known as a coffee industry visionary. Why are you so passionate about this industry?

Abbing: I love the business. The business is full of remarkable people. More than the coffee, there are the people and the ideas. It’s so amazing. I don’t care to sell toothpaste. It’s not the same. Coffee people are different and I’m so passionate about working together with them. We at PROBAT serve the whole market from the small individual shops to the large corporations and they’re all so different. But they all care about quality coffee.

STiR: PROBAT is a leading innovator in the roasting industry. What is the company’s philosophy?

Abbing: I think this is how we do things at PROBAT. I’m running this company as the fourth generation. It’s not only me. We work together as a family business, not only as shareholders but also the work force. We have a philosophy – always strive to be better in all that we do, starting with the business but also in our social responsibility.

It’s also about education of young people. We have a big department for training our own people. This is the heritage of this company, and of this family. Look to the young people, train them as good as you can and keep them involved in everything you can. That brings the best out of them.

(Another) key is to have a good network. Our customers know our service people. We built a network and together with our customers we all come together. We only build the machines. We know how to program the controls but we don’t run the machines. Our customers run the machines 24/7. They know exactly what’s good and what’s bad and what can be better.

We built a new R&D facility in 2012, a roasting plant with different roasters and grinders so we can play with it. We can do the research. We can do development with our customers. Only with them can we get better. This is how we work.

It’s so different and changing. The Japanese drink coffee differently than we do, and Americans drink differently than we do. The capsule philosophy is different in each region. As a company, you have to understand everything. You have to teach your customers and you have to understand them. You have to anticipate their needs.

STiR: Do you modify the training or the machine for each market?

Abbing: Both. Perhaps we have an idea of standardizing our machines for all markets. I don’t think this is right. You cannot do everything from scratch, you cannot build a new machine for everybody and customize. You have to have some models. But the markets are different and the ideas are different. 

I’m so amazed. Our subsidiary in Brazil developed burners for wood a couple years ago. They have roasting machines that run on wood because their customers have wood. Not gas, not natural gas but wood. So we asked: Why not have a coffee roasting business using wood? We developed this and now we have a pretty decent wood roaster. It is actually like going back to the beginning. We started with wood roasters in 1868 and now wood is coming back in some markets. But I’d never sell a wood roaster in New Jersey. Not a lot of wood there.

STiR: What is PROBAT’s next focus for product development?

Abbing: The next step for innovation is in controls, in sensors and to really understand what happens to coffee inside a roaster. This is definitely the next step and we are working on that.

STiR: Roasting also is an art. How do you balance technology and still give roasters the ability to express their style?

Abbing: This is the challenge of a company like ours. On one hand, you have customers who want to scientifically understand the bean and what’s happening to it. So in our lab, we can show you all the coffee bean’s chemical components. We have customers who want us to do this.

We also have other customers who go about it differently. They want the best roaster in the world to roast their own coffee. We have to manage the small and the large. We have to manage the ones who want a fully automated machine and the ones who say give me an artisan roaster. We have a lot of customers who have a roast master sitting next to the machine. Others don’t have anybody next to the roaster.

Larger corporations want reproducibility. They need to be able to reproduce. It’s a key. You cannot depend on the individual.

STiR: You’re an industry visionary. What do you want the next big thing in coffee to be?

Abbing: I’m pretty concerned about our environment and what happens to the origin countries and climate change. This impacts all of us and it will have a big, big impact. So I wish that origin countries will still be able to grow coffee in the next 10 years. We definitely need to make an impact on that so we can keep origin companies involved in coffee and help them so we still have coffee. We all try to do our best individually but I wish we had a combined industrywide program to help the origin countries.