A YOUNG businessman who is making waves in the world of coffee is now aiming to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Ammanford’s Scott James will be telling the story of Coaltown Coffee Roasters to seven school teams through to the final of Young Business Dragons at the Marriott Hotel in Swansea on December 13.

Coaltown Coffee Roasters is the biggest speciality coffee roastery in Wales, supplying Selfridges in Birmingham, as well as holding contracts with companies in Hong Kong, and everywhere in between.

The majority of Coaltown’s stockists are independent coffee shops and its success caught the eye of Sue Poole, chief executive of Centre 4 Entrpenurial Education (C4EE) which organises the Dragons event.

24-year-old Scott left school with no qualifications before starting out with a homemade roaster that his dad built him, roasting coffee from farms in Uganda, Ethiopia, Mexico.

Giving back to the community is a very important element of the work Scott does.

“The idea behind Coaltown was to give opportunity to other people - the same opportunity I was given when I left school.

“Ammanford is a bit of a deprived town. There are not many opportunities.

“So the idea was to bring opportunities to our mining community - to bring jobs, to bring an industry back to the area and get local people, train them up and find them jobs within the coffee industry.”

“We’re going to set up something called the Coaltown Academy.

“We’re going to bring in three apprentices at a time, train them from the beginning - basics in coffee, how to prepare coffee, how to roast coffee.

“Hopefully at the end of that we’re looking to send them off to one of our coffee farms where we get our coffee from.We’re looking to give them all the fundamental skills they need to prepare coffee and at the end of it put them out into the wider world.’’

Scott will be searching for these apprentices at the event on December 13.