By Heneage Mitchell

Shelves crammed with all manner of coffee and tea products line the walls of the reception area of the Phoenix Gold plant in the outskirts of Bangkok.
The range of products produced by Phoenix Gold is enormous, from ground coffee and bulk teas through 3-in-1 coffees to RTD beverages, caffeinated energy drinks, mixers, flavors and extracts. There were a number of different brands on display, some very well-known in Thailand.

Coffee arrived, decorated with colorful latte art designs - a sure sign that this was somewhere that coffee was regarded as something more than just a commodity.
 “Phoenix Gold produces everything coffee,” Eddie Sutton, the affable founder and c.e.o. of the company told Tea & Coffee Asia. “It trades green beans, roasts and grinds coffee and is one of only a handful of companies extracting espresso from roast and ground beans using a Brasilia bulk espresso brewer that produces 3 to 6 liters from 1 kg roasted beans.”
“I was involved in the design of the machine,” Sutton told us. “It produces hot espresso that can be shipped hot or cooled to 4ºC. It is used as a base for RTD coffee drinks – Oishi Coffio uses the extract, among others,” Sutton added. “Typically instant coffee is used in RTD drinks, and when it is mixed with hot water the aromas evaporate, so this is a better alternative as the flavor, and aroma, is retained.”
Phoenix Gold contract manufactures 3-in-1 coffee for a number of customers, including Aro, the house brand of Macro, Thailand’s leading discount supermarket chain.
“We utilize the company’s own spray dryer,” Sutton said. “We produce and package about five tons of 3-in1 in-house every month.”
Phoenix Gold roasts and grinds its own brand, Simba, and supplies OEM R&G to a number of restaurants and coffee shops throughout Thailand and some hotels in the South of Thailand. Some products are exported around ASEAN and elsewhere.
Slenda coffee, which is sold in the US, is produced and packaged in-house by Phoenix Gold.
The factory occupies two floors of the building. We take a tour of the production facilities – surprised at the size of the plant as from the front it looks quite small.
“We roast in 60kg batches, up to 240kg per hour,” Sutton said while posing next to an impressive drum roaster. “For instant coffees we use a Petrocini spray dryer, custom designed and fabricated locally. Our packaging machine comes from Japan.”
The giant Brasilia espresso extractor is silent today: the staff are busy packing 3-in-1 coffee for a contract customer.

Tea too
“Phoenix Gold is also one of the largest - if not the largest - packers of tea produced in Thailand,” Sutton added. “Basically we use an Assam-type tea grown in the North of Thailand. It is processed in-house and supplied as OEM product in bulk.”
Phoenix Gold also produces and supplies tea extracts for a number of companies for use in RTD and other food products.
But it is coffee that remains Sutton’s principal focus, as he explained when we asked him what got him involved in the industry in the first place.
“I was in the US studying,” he told us. “While there, one of the papers I worked on was on coffee trading in the world market. This got me into traveling all over the place to research the subject and I started to become more and more immersed in the coffee industry. I started off in Columbia, then I went down to Brazil. Through all of this traveling and learning from coffee experts, I picked up so much coffee knowledge, from seed to cup.”
Sutton returned to the US and started working for a roasting company in Los Angeles where he started learning about roasting.
“But the roast master said ‘if you want to be a roast master you have to go to Italy, that’s how you will learn about the machines and all the aspects that go into a perfect roast’,” Sutton recalled.
So he set off for Italy.
“I got together with Petrocini and learned about machinery in the factory,” Sutton said. “I also worked with FEMA, where I got involved with one of the company’s founders who went on to set up GEM. I also learned about automatic and pod and capsule machines with Gino Rossi, manufacturers of Brasilia machines and portafilters.”
Heading back once again to the US, Sutton finally presented his thesis and graduated and after the first Gulf War he returned to Thailand, where coffee was still relatively rare at the time.
He decided to change that.
“I bought a Thai company, LKS Food Maker, and I expanded its footprint to include La Vita, producing specialty coffee and developing a company-owned coffee chain in Bangkok,” Sutton revealed. “By 2001 we had 22 outlets open. At the time, Starbucks had around five stores, so we were something of a trend setter.”
La Vita had the first espresso outlet at Don Muang airport, so for many visitors to Thailand in those days the first and often most memorable cup of coffee they enjoyed was on arrival or departure. He finally sold the company to a group of investors and moved on to Phoenix Gold where he set about supplying high quality coffee, tea and other products, including flavorings, smoothies, and syrups, squash and extracts, to discerning customers throughout Thailand and the region and beyond.
Sutton is now something of an institution in Thailand, a popular figure often found at coffee events across the kingdom and abroad pursuing his goal of introducing the best coffees in the world to discerning Thai consumers.
Sutton was invited to the Bali specialty coffee auction in September, 2010, where he made an initial purchase of 100 kg of wild Kopi Luwak produced by Maharaja Coffee, a Jakarta-based company.
“We introduced Kopi Luwak to the Thai market,” Sutton said, “selling primarily to individual coffee connoisseurs – all of them Thai.”
The coffee sells for THB70,000 per kilo, and is also available in 100 gram packets, so its not for the average consumer.
 “We do have an elite group of coffee drinkers who are looking for the best and the best has to be the real thing, not counterfeit,” said Sutton. “So when you can provide that kind of product and the trust is invested in you, they become a customer for life. I have received calls from people asking me to set up a coffee club in Thailand. They want to invest THB1 million (US$33,000) each to join this club. So there is clearly a niche market that is both educated and demanding where coffee is concerned.”
The quest for the perfect cup of coffee, be it genuine Blue Mountain, Kopi Luwak or Sumatran arabica, is alive and well in Thailand, and Eddie Sutton and Phoenix Gold are leading the charge.