The Trung Nguyen Coffee Company is Vietnam’s largest and best known coffee roaster. Since mid-2010 the company, which supplies over 1,000 coffee shops in Vietnam, China, Japan and Thailand, has relocated some of its roasted coffee production to a newly-erected roasting facility incorporating with German technology. The coffee beans that are roasted mainly for consumption and sale in its own coffee shops are processed by a Neuhaus Neotec RFB 350 roaster. This roaster can process up to 4 tons of coffee per hour, with batch sizes between 90kg and 350kg. 

Construction of the new roasting facility in Boun Ma Thuot City started in 2009, and roasted coffee has been produced there since mid-2010. For the owners, the desire to use the most advanced roasting technology world-wide was a deciding factor when selecting the components. 

Primarily Vietnamese green coffee beans, mainly Vietnamese robusta, are roasted in the new plant. However, coffees from other producing nations, such as Brazil, are roasted with the RFB 350, too. The roasting time depends on the coffee blend and can vary between 2.5 and 15 minutes. In the case of Trung Nguyen, it is usually five minutes. The roasted coffee is not cooled with water and air, as is normal practice, but with air only. It is discharged from the cooling chamber with a deliberately high bean temperature of about 150°C. This temperature is required for the subsequent caramelization and aromatization process. 

The RFB 350 roaster is controlled by sophisticated software from Neuhaus Neotec, including the new profile and copy-roasting programs. 

With intensive personnel training conducted by Neuhaus Neotec specialist, the assembly and commissioning works in the new roasting plant are now almost completed. A Neuhaus Neotec mechanical and an electrical supervisor as well as a process engineer installed the roasting machine together with Vietnamese suppliers from early May to late July 2010, tailoring it to the particular requirements of Trung Nguyen. An especially positive aspect was the very good and reliable cooperation between the customer, Vietnamese suppliers and Neuhaus Neotec experts. 

The construction of the new roasting facility with a capacity of up to 4,000kg of coffee per hour is a first step of a long-term national and international expansion strategy of the Vietnamese coffee roaster founded in 1996. In a second expansion step, the coffee roasting capacity is still to be increased with the addition of a second Neuhaus Neotec RFB 350.