MPE unveils Super.Max grinder

When European coffee roasters first started the process of Nespresso-style capsule manufacturing, Ephraim says they used disc grinders that could fit on top of the capsule packaging machines.

“These disc grinders were the right size, but not only did they not provide as precise a grind as modern roller grinders, they could not provide the same densification technology as MPE roller mills,” Ephraim says.

The irony with grinding for capsules, he adds, is that they benefit so much with the use of roller mills, but the compactness of small disc-style grinders on top of packaging machines was originally the easiest option.

“This was unique for industrial coffee grinding, where outside of Nespresso-style applications, nobody uses a disc grinder,” Ephraim says. “So we said, ‘Ok let’s design a roller mill that fits on top of a capsule filling machine and works in tandem with it like a disc grinder.”

Technical literature such as particle size analysis demonstrates how roller mills provide a superior grind, and for a grind that is as technical as Nespresso-style capsules, this is very important. Ephraim says laser analysis shows that particle size distributions are much wider from disc grinders, whereas roller mills yield more uniform and narrow distribution curves, making them ideal for single-serve extractions.

Many capsule manufacturing facilities use larger roller mills, like the flagship MPE IMD 999, which can feed multiple capsule packaging machines. Ephraim says this configuration yields a technically perfect grind and density, but is not as ideal in some cases as having a single, smaller grinder feeding a single packaging machine.

“A lot of these capsule packaging machines would have a capacity of 150 to 250 kilograms of coffee per hour,” says Ephraim. “So, you had this big grinder and this smaller packaging machine and either it was overkill for the packaging machine, or you had two packaging machines that were being fed by one grinder. But because of the way the single-serve packaging machines operate, it is not always optimal to have one grinder serving two or three packaging machines.”