Casebook 2011: Camano Island Coffee Roasters employs fleet of environmentally friendly lift trucks

Camano Island Coffee Roasters receives, roasts and ships coffee direct to customers across the United States. To ensure freshness, the company uses a fleet of environmentally friendly lift trucks (Toyota Material Handling U.S.A., 800-226-0009, http://www.toyotaforklift.com) to move product quickly and consistently through the facility.

“We pride ourselves in the freshness of our coffee, which means it is imperative our forklifts run smoothly to ship coffee daily,” says company president Jeff Ericson. “That’s why we chose a reliable and environmentally conscious lift truck.”

The company relies on lift trucks from the moment beans arrive at the company’s headquarters, where the trucks unload 25,000-pound truckloads of raw coffee to a temperature-controlled storage area.

Green coffee beans are moved daily from the storage area to the roasting facility before making their way to the packaging division. There, while the coffee is still warm from roasting, each order is picked, packed and prepared for the shipping group.

Most of the organic coffee is sold online and direct to thousands of homes through the company’s Coffee Lover’s Club. To avoid an interruption to the supply chain, it is essential that the equipment used to handle the pallets of organic beans run at top performance. True to its goal of social responsibility, the company ensures that its suppliers offer products that are also environmentally friendly ­— down to the lift trucks.