Italy’s Lavazza Boosts US Investment to Spur Coffee Expansion
Lavazza will direct more than a third of its investment budget toward the US this year as Italy’s biggest coffeemaker seeks to triple revenue in a country that accounts for less than 10 per cent of sales.
Closely held Lavazza, a coffee provider for Keurig Green Mountain’s K-Cup system, is targeting "tens of millions of dollars" at US distribution and marketing in 2015, according to Vice Chairman Giuseppe Lavazza. That’s out of total spending of about $30 million.
Lavazza is seeking to tap the growth of the world’s largest coffee-consuming country, where it has barely scratched the surface since entering in 1990. The company had US sales of about $100 million last year in a market that’s worth about $12.8 billion. It seeks to double that by 2018, with a final goal of creating a $300 m...