Mazzer is an Italian espresso grinder manufacturer founded in 1948 by Luigi Mazzer, growing out of a precision mechanical workshop established between the two World Wars. Nearly eight decades on, Mazzer remains independently owned by the Mazzer family, and its engineering, most notably the stepless micrometrical grind collar, set the standard the entire commercial grinder industry still follows.

Origins: A Precision Workshop in Venice

Luigi Mazzer founded the company in 1948, building on a background in precision mechanical engineering rather than coffee equipment specifically. That mechanical grounding shaped the brand from the start: Mazzer grinders were built like precision instruments, not kitchen appliances.

The company has stayed in Gardigiano di Scorzè, in the Metropolitan City of Venice, ever since. Today all manufacturing, research, and assembly run from a dedicated facility of more than 14,000 square metres in Venice. Unlike many of its industry peers, Mazzer has never been acquired by a multinational conglomerate. It remains privately owned by the Mazzer family under Mazzer Luigi S.p.A., and reinvests a significant share of annual turnover into research and development.

The Innovation That Defined Commercial Grinding

Mazzer's defining engineering contribution is the stepless micrometrical collar, a threaded adjustment ring that allows infinite, fluid grind-size changes rather than fixed click steps. Mazzer pioneered and popularised this mechanism, and it became the foundational design that most commercial espresso grinders still use today.

The company also does something most grinder manufacturers do not: it machines, sharpens, and heat-treats all of its own flat and conical burrs in-house, from solid certified steel blocks, rather than outsourcing burr production. That level of control over the single most important component in a grinder is a large part of why Mazzer grinders are trusted for consistency under heavy daily use.

The Commercial Workhorses

Mazzer built its reputation on machines designed to survive relentless café volume. The Super Jolly, released in the 1970s with 64mm flat burrs, became one of the most widely used commercial espresso grinders in speciality coffee history, and versions of it are still running in cafés worldwide decades later.

The Major and the Robur pushed further into high-throughput territory. The Robur paired heavy conical burrs with a reduction gear running at a deliberately low 420 to 500 RPM, keeping heat transfer to the beans to a minimum even during a sustained rush, when a grinder is working hardest and consistency matters most.

In the late 1990s, Mazzer brought that same commercial engineering into a smaller footprint with the Mini, condensing die-cast alloy housing and industrial internals into a machine that suited a home counter rather than a café bar. It became the benchmark prosumer grinder for a generation of serious home baristas.

The Modern Precision Era

Since 2018, Mazzer has moved into digital precision without abandoning its mechanical roots. Grind Flow Control, a patented hybrid wire damper system, regulates ground coffee dispersion to neutralise static and eliminate clumping. Grind-by-weight technology, using real-time load-cell dosing, arrived in the Mini G and Kony SG. The Philos introduced true zero-retention single-dose grinding, and the ZM added stepper-motor-driven digital gap calibration with retention below half a gram, aimed squarely at filter and speciality brewing.

Mazzer's Range Today

That range spans single-dose brewing through to full commercial grinding. At the compact end sits the zero-retention Philos, alongside the grind-by-weight Mini G, the Mini Electronic, and the New Mini C Electronic, available in Black or Silver at R20,700.

On the commercial side, flat-burr grinding runs through the on-demand Super Jolly V UP and Super Jolly Electronic Pro V, and the higher-capacity Major V Electronic and Major V Automatic. For higher-volume sites, conical-burr machines take over: the Kony S Electronic, the grind-by-weight Kony SG, and the high-volume Robur S Electronic, while the filter-focused ZM serves speciality brewing with its own digital gap calibration.

Rounding out the range, the T-Tamper brings automatic tamping into the barista workflow.

We distribute, calibrate, and service Mazzer grinders nationwide across South Africa, including Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and Pretoria, with genuine factory parts kept in stock for maintenance and repairs. Browse the dedicated Mazzer collection, the wider coffee grinders collection, or automatic tampers.

The Mazzer Range at Buna

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