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New Coffee Roasting Approach via Digital Twin

Belgium-based CEE used our Digital Twin technology to develop a continuous coffee roasting system for Ray & Jules.

Heat. Roast. Cool. These three steps have defined industrial coffee roasting since the 1900s. Once the roaster reaches 600 degrees Celsius – traditionally using natural gas – the beans are tossed for approximately six to ten minutes, then left to cool before being removed to make room for the next batch.

Seeking an alternative to gas-powered roasting, engineers at CEE developed a different approach. Their solution is a continuous roaster, where the beans glide on a belt through precision-controlled chambers with hot air that circulates several times, at temperatures of up to 250 degrees Celsius. Their alternative to traditional roasting began as a Digital Twin – developed using our software solutions such as Designcenter, Solid Edge and Simcenter.

This new system recovers heat and reuses it in the roasting process, says Koen Bosmans, CEO of CEE. He adds that its stable energy consumption pattern makes the process easier to electrify, enabling it to run on renewable electricity where available.

Start as a virtual model

Combining in-house expertise, a decent portion of technological wizardry, and the latest software tools and solutions from the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio, the CEE team finetuned their design and optimized their engineering work until they were satisfied that they had the solution they wanted. Their tailorable roasting technology was born – and nicknamed “La Bomba.”

The engineers began with preliminary designs in Designcenter Solid Edge. “We’ve used Designcenter Solid Edge for 15 years already, so we have a lot of experience with it. It is a CAD software that is streamlined and quick to learn. This is important for us today because we are growing fast and new engineers can quickly jump in and easily start with the software,” explains Kristof Cambré, Chief Production Officer at CEE. For further work on creating a workable Digital Twin model, they used Designcenter and Simcenter – in particular Simcenter FLOEFD, for fast and accurate fluid flow and heat transfer analysis.

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woman on a working station with blue sweater

CEE is a leading turnkey supplier for industrial projects, mostly in the food and beverage industry as well as in construction materials. Their industrial machines – featuring innovative breakthrough technologies in roasting, drying, and energy recovery – are handcrafted in their factory in Geel, Belgium, before being custom-installed onsite at the customer.Despite their reputation for innovation and quality, it was difficult to convince the big players in the coffee roasting industry to switch to the new production technology. So they established their own coffee roaster, calling it Ray & Jules. “It really took blood, sweat, and tears, but we persisted. And in December 2019, we launched Ray & Jules as a brand,” says Koen Bosmans. Thus, it became the first company to use this innovative roasting technology for commercial coffee production. When it comes to taste, there’s no compromise with the traditional roasting technique.

Made to order, down to the millimeter

In the meantime, other roasters have adopted CEE’s roasting solution. To guarantee a flawless installation, CEE engineers use our technology to digitalize the actual customer factory site. “We use the Designcenter point cloud visualization solution to validate our design in the customer environment,” explains Kristof Cambré. “We scan the complete installation site, import and integrate the digital twin that we designed, and check if it fits or not. In most cases, we have down-to-the-millimeter accuracy. We can rest assured that the quality of the product that we deliver will be good.”

Ray & Jules has served millions of cups of coffee made with beans roasted using this new process. In its own operations, the company powers the roasting system with electricity from its own solar panels – and when the sun isn’t shining, it uses electricity covered by a green-energy guarantee contract.

Beyond Ray & Jules, CEE has delivered this innovative roasting system to other customers and the technology is gaining traction among global coffee suppliers. Building on these partnerships, CEE has expanded its roasting capabilities to include cocoa and malt.

Learn more about the reference.

Photos: Copyright Ray & Jules, Siemens
June 2025

Image of: Sarah Bergé from Ray & Jules with coffee farmers for a siemens reference

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