Last week on April 29, Ruth Ann was excited and honored at the same time to visit two of Houston's coffee warehouses. Only after the two visits did she realize she had the pleasure of seeing what are probably the oldest and the newest coffee warehouses of the port of Houston!
Dupuy Warehouse - the 'Ol Vanguard: First Ruth Ann was welcomed by the team at Dupuy. The first thing she noticed was how the warehouse district seems relatively close to Houston's downtown. She had imagined coffee being warehoused somewhere near Galveston, TX. But she learned the Buffalo Bayou brings ocean vessels many miles up from the coast to Houston's bustling port.The Dupuy- Houston location has been supporting the coffee industry's complex import and logistics needs since 2007. The facility has an impressive 296,000 sq. ft., including 24,000 sq. ft. of temperature controlled space. They offer a long array of services and have a team with managers like David Galvan Operations Manager there for 13 years. Ruth Ann also met Joe Boisvert, Sr. Director of Sales; Preston Asay, Houston's Commercial Manager and Robert Lewis, General Manager,
As the Dupuy team shared their best practices for maintaining pest-free, climate controlled storage, the topic of adequately packaging green coffee for LTL transport came up. Ruth Ann gathered insights on Dupuy's tips for "quad-strapping and wrapping" pallets so that heavy coffee bags avoid sagging and slouching, which can result in broken and damaged bags.
RPM Warehouse is very new! The newest of Houston's coffee warehouses is RPM, which opened its doors in December 2023 in a new industrial park and newly built facility. While the square footage is similar to Dupuy, RPM boasts 36' (vs. 21') ceilings. The stacks of coffee were literally towering over us as we walked the 1100 ft building length, observing 80 available loading docks, 40 on each side.
Jeff Hernandez, General Manager, welcomed Ruth Ann in the conference room with a showcase of dozens of coffee cans from the 1930s and a library of books with titles like "The Economics of Futures Trading", "Guide to Commodity Price Forecasting" and "The Coffee Break." Hernandez explained the collection of coffee cans and books were his father's. Then he proceeded to share the intriguing story of his Dad, Al Hernandez, who started as a green coffee trader, then worked for Dupuy in New Orleans, then built Dupuy's Houston warehouse, which was the first for coffee in the area. Later, after Dupuy was sold to a private equity firm, RPM's owner, Ray Masucci, reached out to Al, and asked if he'd join RPM. Al did, and eventually helped RPM build RPM's Houston location where we were standing. In April 2024, Jeff Hernandez also left Dupuy, and became RPM Houston's new GM.
It's not surprising, given how new it is, but it's still impressive to see how RPM showcases the most modern processes, machinery and infrastructure for coffee storage and logistics. There are 288 LED lights on timers in the class A building with giant ceiling fans to help cool the building without air-conditioning. Electric powered fork-lifts quietly run down shiny clean floors between yellow lines, and later hum at their fork-lift charging station. These high-tech features are the back-drop to simple improvements like Jeff's hand-built window shades made with the same netting used on coffee drying tables at origin!
Ruth Ann was impressed to see that coffee un-loading at this point in the value-chain is done much like it is at the other end - by strong arms and backs. "We have some of the best lumpers", Jeff explains, as he allows me to watch a stocky man deftly unload 132 lb coffee bags from a semi-truck trailer onto the pallet held by a fork-lift using only his strong arms, legs and back.
All-in-all it was a great day of learning and appreciating the diverse skills of those who staff coffee warehouses. It was also an opportunity to appreciate those who have had the vision to build and maintain these essential facilities to our industry.
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