By Claire Reilly
Jura has a busy few months ahead following Berlin’s IFA trade show with the company launching a range of new machines, including several that are set to come to Australian shores, and one which will arrive before Christmas.
Outlining the new additions to the line-up, Jura Australia’s head of sales, George Liakatos, said there was plenty of innovation for retailers to get excited about.
“We’re a niche company – we only do automatic coffee machines, we don’t do anything else in our range. And the level of innovation that we are seeing coming out is amazing,” he said. “The range is increasing but we’re also getting a lot of refinements and good features.”
There are four models that Liakatos was showing retailers at IFA – the Impressa Z9 One Touch TFT (an update to the Z7 model in Australia); the J9.4, which will join the J9.2 and J9.3; the mid-class F7 and the new Ena Micro 1 which will be in Australia in time for Christmas, and at a sub-$1,000 price point.
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“The Impressa Z9 One Touch TFT comes in two colours – piano black and chrome,” explained Liakatos. “We’ve been having some meetings with retailers here in Berlin which forms part of our planning for next year, and I think the most popular is the piano black. It’s got the TFT screen, and now you can also customise the screen as well, which is a new feature.
Although pricing and release is yet to be confirmed, it is expected to sit at roughly the same price point as the Z7, which currently retails for $3,899.
Also new to the range is the J9.4 One Touch TFT, which features an individualised and hand polished front fascia, according to Liakatos, and is “probably the fastest machine that Jura has” with the ability to produce three different types of coffee within two minutes, thanks to new thermoblock technology.
Updating the C9 model, which is a well-established machine within the Australian market, is the F7, which features “new grinding technology, a greater capacity bean hopper with aroma preservation seal, coffee and milk in the one location with the new fine foam texture and nine different coffee specialties”.
Finally, as Jura’s big push for Christmas and the machine that the Australian subsidiary is “most excited about”, is the Ena Micro 1.
“This is a purely espresso machine so it’s very simple. I like to call it multi-lingual – there are no words – and it’s probably the simplest machine that we have in our range,” said Liakatos. “Basically this is operating on a portion system. There are two coffee strengths, three different cup sizes, it’s programmable and you can make espresso or any coffee at the touch of a button. I often get the feedback in our market that people really want something that’s simple, and this is very simple to use.
"And new to our range is the separate milk frother. It has the electronics on the bottom, not on the top, and you press the button once for cold milk, twice for warm and three times for hot, and it starts frothing the milk.
“It’s going to retail in Australia, combined, for $990, so it’s the first Jura machine that’s going to be priced under $1,000. And the milk frother will be able to be sold separately as well, for $129 retail.”
George Liakatos shows off the new Milk Frother that will be available with the Ena Micro 1 (behind). The milk is textured to a soft foam with micro-fine bubbles and can be made at either cold, warm or hot temperatures.