BarcelonaUntil it reaches your cup every morning, coffee goes through many stages, from planting in distant countries such as Brazil or Vietnam to roasting in nearby factories and its marketing on supermarket shelves. During this long process, a fundamental stage takes place in the port of Barcelona, where there is the terminal that receives the raw coffee beans and prepares them to send them to the roasters.
These facilities, the Barcelona International Terminal (BIT), are the gateway to 80% of the coffee beans that arrive in Spain, with the processing of 210,000 tons per year. This makes Barcelona the second most important port in Europe for this traffic, only behind Antwerp (Belgium).
The terminal was born from the hand of the local company Masiques and the Swiss multinational Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS). It was inaugurated in the eighties, when trade in this product was liberalized in Spain, and now it will be modernized with an investment of 30 million euros. “It’s another step in this success story”, defended the CEO of Masiques, José Miguel Masiques, second generation of the family company, during the presentation of the project.
The Barcelona International Terminal (BIT) will be updated and, to do so, it will have to be moved. In a space as sought-after as the land at the port of Barcelona, its exit will be key to the growth of another company, the Catalan Elian, bought by the American group Viserion, in the current facilities, with nearly 63,000 square meters at the Álvarez de la Campa pier.
The new BIT will be built in the harbor roundabout, on a plot of more than 53,000 square meters. The Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona (CZFB) will be the one to have the land under a management concession for the next 50 years, taking into account that the terminal has the tax status of a customs free zone. The works are expected to last until mid-2027, with the CZFB and the Port of Barcelona sharing the investment.
“It is the most important coffee terminal in southern Europe, and the new project must allow it to continue to maintain this leadership position,” said the president of the Port of Barcelona, José Alberto Carbonell. This is also influenced by the fact that Spain is the second largest producer of soluble coffee and decaffeinated coffee in Europe, and also the third largest producer of roasted coffee.
Although they will have less space, the future facilities will have the same capacity, with the possibility of storing up to 50,000 tons of green coffee. They will also make it possible to double the current production capacity and automate processes, as well as incorporate new ones to reach more customers, such as, for example, the cleaning or mixing of coffee beans. “We need to reach more factories,” Masiques pointed out, with the focus on having a greater presence in France or North Africa and debuting in markets such as Switzerland. Currently, the terminal has between 80 and 100 workers and it is expected to expand the workforce in the new stage.
