No more than 33 cups of coffee a day

''Not less than three, not more than 33,'' says Giuseppe Lavazza of the number of coffees he drinks a day. ''It's an Italian joke, but also true.'' Lavazza is a vice-president of the coffee roaster that bears his name - the biggest in Italy, where it has 48 per cent of the market, and one of the biggest family-owned coffee companies in the world. ''Without any doubt, we are in the first three in the world,'' he says. ''Maybe the first.'' The company, which started life as a Turin drygoods store in 1895, roasts 2.4 million bags of coffee a year - that's 17 billion cups - with revenue of €1.2 billion ($1.5 billion). Lavazza, the great-grandson of founder Luigi Lavazza, was in Melbourne last week. The Australian business is worth €20 million - small ''but very important to us'', Lavazza says. ''Coffee is part of our lifestyle,'' he says. ''You can't consider a guy Italian if he doesn't have two specific passions. One is soccer, the other one is coffee.''

MATT HOLDEN