New port deal amounts to a hill of Starbucks beans

Wake up, Port of Charleston.

Local terminals could get a jittery jolt from one of their newest users: Starbucks Coffee Co.

The Seattle-based company said Friday that it plans to bring shipments of green coffee beans through the port en route to a $70 million roasting facility it is building in St. Matthews.

In the interim, the beans will make a stop in Jedburg, said Doug Martocci Jr., vice president of Continental Terminals Inc., which is leasing a 245,166-square-foot warehouse where the imports will be stored.

New Jersey-based Continental expects to hire 30 local workers to oversee the warehouse and truck the cargo up the interstate to St. Matthews. The family-owned company specializes in handling coffee and cocoa products.

The Starbucks beans likely will come from growers in tropical locales such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Cote d'Ivoire in Africa, Martocci said.

"Most of the countries border the equator," he said.

After arriving at the port the bags of beans will be trucked to the Jedburg warehouse, where they will be unloaded, organized and stored.

Workers then will move the beans as needed to the 150,000-square-foot roasting and packaging facility when it opens next year.

Continental will begin operations at the warehouse July 1.

Starbucks' Midlands plant will employ about 160 workers, and it will be the company's fifth roasting facility in the world.

The others are in Washington state, Nevada, Pennsylvania and the Netherlands.

The Calhoun County plant will roast, grind and package coffee for Starbucks locations throughout the Southeast, where the chain has more than 2,200 retail stores.

Continental also has port-related warehouses in Miami; Newark, N.J.; and Norfolk, Va.

The company considered shipping the Starbucks beans through the Port of Savannah but it decided on Charleston because of its proximity to the roasting plant, Martocci said.

Reach Katy Stech at 937-5549 or kstech@postandcourier.com.