WATERBURY, Vt. (AP) – Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. Wednesday heralded the opening of its new $9 million distribution center, a cavernous warehouse officials said will help the company increase its capacity to roast and ship coffee to customers nationwide.

Construction of the 52,000 square foot facility began last November, and the warehouse is expected to be up and running completely by the end of this month, public relations director Rick Peyser said.

Company officials and various state dignitaries were on hand to celebrate the opening of the center, which sits next to Green Mountain Coffee’s existing production facility in downtown Waterbury.

“This is really such a big wow,” President and CEO Robert Stiller told a crowd of employees and officials, including Sen. Patrick Leahy and Gov. James Douglas. “This shows what can be done when a group of people come together to get something done.”

Launched in 1981 from a small cafe in Waitsfield, Green Mountain Coffee has grown to 600 employees, including about 475 at its Waterbury headquarters. The company’s coffee is available in supermarket chains and ExxonMobil convenience stores nationally; other clients include Amtrak and JetBlue Airways, Peyser said. Third quarter sales were over $31 million, a 19 percent increase from the same period in 2003.

Business Ethics magazine earlier this year ranked Green Mountain Coffee fifth on its list of 100 good corporate citizens, citing the higher prices the company pays for coffee beans bought from farmers in Peru, Mexico and Sumatra. That effort has been an important part of the company’s image as a marketer of so-called “specialty coffee,” high-quality blends whose flavor reflects where they are grown or how they are processed.

“They’re definitely a presence in the specialty coffee industry,” said Mike Ferguson, a spokesman for the Specialty Coffee Association of America. “The people they’ve hired over the years have a reputation of being quality-obsessed.”

The new warehouse will eventually allow Green Mountain Coffee to more than triple its roasting, packaging, distribution and storing capacities, Peyser said. Coffee beans are roasted and packaged in the older facility, and taken over an enclosed bridge to the warehouse.

There the coffee is stored on metal racks 60 feet high, and sorted and shipped with help from a fully mechanized handling system of conveyor belts. Green Mountain also has five regional warehouse and distribution centers in the Northeast and Florida that are used primarily for local delivery, Peyser said.

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On the Net:

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters: http://www.greenmountaincoffee.com

Specialty Coffee Association of America: http://www.scaa.org

AP-ES-09-01-04 1518EDT