Mill City Roasters Unveils M-Series Machines with In-House Fabrication

Mill City Roasters M-Series. All images courtesy of Mill City Roasters.

Minneapolis-based Mill City Roasters recently unveiled its new flagship M-Series line of coffee roasters, available in 6-kilogram, 10-kilogram and 20-kilogram capacities.

The new line reflects a massive undertaking behind the scenes at Mill City Roasters, where fabrication has been brought in-house at the company’s new 40,000-square-foot headquarters in Northeast Minneapolis. The company says it now fabricates more than 400 unique components per roaster using in-house laser cutting, forming, welding and CNC machining.

“Having our own production facility 40 steps away from our designers and engineers makes everything seem possible,” Mill City Roasters Vice President Angie Davis told Daily Coffee News. “This type of in-house capability is going to lead to product lines and problem solving we haven’t even considered. It’s an exciting time at Mill City Roasters.”

Mill City Roasters M-Series

Mill City is positioning the M-Series as a bridge between traditional hands-on commercial drum roasting and increasingly automated production.

A signature feature of the new machines is a “monolithic chassis,” a laser-welded plate steel construction designed to act as a “thermal battery” that can store and predictably release heat, allowing roasts to rely more on latent energy and less on applied burner heat, according to Davis.

The machines also feature shaftless double-walled drums, with the outer wall evenly diffusing the burner heat to prevent conductive heat defects in the inner drum.

Additional physical features within the new line include a new fan output for flexibility in venting, a new layout to optimize operator controls for standing or sitting and a redesigned cooling tray. The company is also offering multiple trim packages, plus custom colors and branding.

On the technology and automation side, the new series introduces a new interface with Mill City’s built-in RoastPath software and a haptic jog wheel for intuitive, tactile controls. Optional automated fan, fuel and drum speed settings with sophisticated feedback loops connect to the RoastPath software.

Within that software package is the Path Intelligence roast profiling tool, which provides access to more than 610,000 roast profiles and offers predictive profiles based on factors such as coffee origin, post-harvest processing and finish temperature.

On-Shoring Manufacturing Amid New Tariffs

While on-shoring manufacturing had been a priority at Mill City for years, Davis said new tariffs and threats of new tariffs on U.S. imports under the second term of the Trump administration “lit a fire under us.”

“What was unexpected was the scale and swiftness of disruption,” Davis said. “Our entire industry was getting squeezed on everything from green coffee to cup sleeves and in a sad way, that helped. Everyone in the industry understood exactly what was happening so we could talk transparently about how tariffs affected us and the cost of our equipment.”

Davis said Mill City has already logged orders from roughly two dozen early customers, and the company is developing internal programs to connect prospective M-Series buyers with secondhand buyers for older “legacy” Mill City roasters.

For buyers in the U.S. and Canada, the Mill City Roasters website currently lists pre-order prices for the base 6-, 10- and 20-kilogram M-Series roasters at $34,800, $42,800 and $64,800.

Looking ahead, Davis said Mill City expects to begin fabrication of additional M-Series sizes, including 3-kilogram and 30-kilogram versions, by the end of this summer.

Mill City said the new M-Series line will be featured at World of Coffee San Diego, taking place April 10-12, 2026.

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