Our factory

Café Najjar has invested in the largest coffee factory in Lebanon, a 15,000 m2 plant equipped with the most highly advanced computerized coffee machinery in the region. Our state-of-the-art machinery ensures that every product that leaves our factory has been subjected to the highest quality standards and rigorous food safety procedures.

Inside the factory, 60 million packs, equivalent to 12,000 metric tons, of coffee are produced per year, some destined for Lebanon, where Café Najjar serves up more than three million cups of coffee a day, and some destined for the 46 countries around the world to which we export.

Beginning with selecting the finest coffee beans that offer a high quality, exceptional flavor, the coffee process follows, which includes cleaning, grinding, roasting, wrapping, and vacuum packaging for flavor. These ultra precise and thorough operations are monitored by a computer program that doesn’t allow any alteration of the bean. Professional tasters also play an integral role in the process, forming the most reliable way of controlling a high quality flavor.

Our coffee process

Coffee quality varies depending on factors such as soil, climate, humidity, altitude, sun, rain. On average each coffee tree lives for 50 years and produces 5 kilos of “cherries” per year, which yields 1 kilo of coffee beans. Once ripe the beans are harvested, dried under the sun, continuously turned until their peel falls off, then they are cleaned, de-stoned, and dried in the sun one last time. After this beans are sorted according to size, color and weight.

A representative sample is then delivered for testing and evaluation to Najjar’s master tasters, a process known as coffee cupping. At least five specialists, including two senior panel leaders with more than 15 years of coffee tasting experience, meticulously test these samples.

Once approved, the coffee beans are de-stoned to remove foreign material, weighed and transferred by pneumatic conveyor humidity-proof silos. From here they are conveyed to the roaster. Najjar roasters have precise standards that maintain a singular flavor known as a “roasting recipe”. At the end of the roasting cycle the roasted beans are dumped from the roasting chamber and cooled with forced air.

Grinding and blending is an extremely delicate process that affects the coffee’s eventual smoothness and balance. This process is meticulously controlled and monitored online by highly advanced machines.

Coffee analysts use professional, regularly calibrated, laboratory equipment, such as vacuum ovens and scales, to measure the coffee color. Ground coffee samples are tested every 15 minutes before and after packing for every batch.

The packing process uses cutting edge techniques in order to preserve the exceptional taste: pressure sealed packs under modified atmosphere pressure. Prior to packing, the finished product is cupped one last time to guarantee its quality.

Once packed, the product is thoroughly tested by highly qualified specialists who perform the taste and process control for color, density measurements, moisture level, oxygen residual, weight and seal test, using highly sophisticated lab equipment.