Coffee Planet celebrates 10 years amidst expansion

UAE-based Coffee Planet is celebrating a decade of operations this year, and has major expansion plans in the pipeline.

Coffee Planet managing director Robert Jones said this also reflected in the space the brand has at Gulfood this year.

He revealed: "We’ve grown in size as a business and in terms of the space and the stand for Gulfood, we wanted to promote more of what we do. I tend to use the expression that we’re a bit of an iceberg. A lot of people know us for a certain proportion of what we do but they don’t see the underlying aspects of the other part of our business.

"That was very important to us as we grow within the UAE and the region that we took a much bigger stand, a bigger, more dominant presence."

The brand supplies to many five-star hotels in Dubai, and has now moved into the single-serve market, even for hotels. He said: "A lot of hotels use single serve machines in the rooms so we have an option and a solution for their rooms, for their guests as well as banqueting."

Jones added: "We like to be very innovative and that has contributed a lot to our growth. Last year we grew by 30% as a business, so in our nine years in business we are still growing at a rapid rate. The market is growing obviously but we continue to innovate, we continue to focus on customer service, capitalising on our very good reputation for high quality products and service."

Emphasising the importance of quality for the business, Jones said: "We have some very high aspirations for 2015, as well with the launch of our range of capsules and new pieces of equipment.

"We’ve got some major new contracts that we’ve won recently that will help propel that growth. It’s been not wirhout its challenges to grow at such a rate, for any business, those levels of growth need very secure funding to support it and other foundations to support that level of growth. We’ve achieved that last year and continue at the same rate this year."

Jones revealed the firm has signed a JV partnership with Ahmed Hassan Bilal Trading, to expand its regional distribution and brand presence. He added: "As a local roaster, we’re ready to really push into more regional and international markets. And we’re shifting our perspective from local-cum-regional to more of a regional-cum-global perspective. And challenging some of the bigger brands and bigger distribution channels."