Jericho Coffee Traders founder James Armitage tells Pete Hughes the improbable story of his life.

"IF your passions are rowing, classical music and coffee, it makes coming to Oxford almost inevitable."

As a statement of fact it's possibly true – it's just a very, very improbable sentence for anyone to utter, especially someone who grew up as far away as you can get from Oxford without actually leaving the Earth.

But then, James Armitage is a fairly improbable human being: his entire life is a story of a man seeing things he wants and stopping at nothing to get them.

Born and raised in Christchurch, New Zealand, the young James came to England in 2004 to study at the Royal College of Music in Kensington.

You certainly wouldn't guess it to look at him, but he is an accomplished counter-tenor singer: one of the highest voices in music.

It's such a rare type of voice, he says, that his dream as a teenager was to train in London then return to New Zealand and teach his own people about it.

That plan was derailed on his very first day of college in the way that so many great men's plans are sometimes derailed: by a beautiful woman.

He recalls: "A pianist friend of mine who was also from Christchurch was showing me around the halls when this girl walked across the end of the corridor and I said 'oh my god – there's a supermodel going to this college'.

"She said 'that's Lizzie, she's 19 (I was 28 at the time) and her boyfriend looks like a model'."

Unfazed, he then spent the next three years trying to win her over and, in the way that James Armitage so often is, he was successful.

He adds: "And that's why I'm still in the country, really."

After college the couple moved to Winchester and Mr Armitage joined the cathedral choir.

He says, "I guess we lived the proper cathedral singer's life."

Then one day, his life changed forever – again – when he fell in love – again – this time with a Vespa scooter.

He explained: "It was parked on the side of the road in the cathedral close, it never went anywhere, so I knocked on the guy's door and said 'I'm dearly in love with this vehicle, can I buy it from you?' and he sold it to me."

In the next year the couple got engaged, then Mr Armitage's visa ran out, he moved back to New Zealand, got an engagement visa, moved back to the UK, the couple got married and moved to Oxford in September 2011 where Mr Armitage got a job as a rowing coach at Oriel College.

Then, for reasons which are not clear, he says: "We put an espresso machine on the back of the Vespa."

He still remembers the date he first went out to sell coffee to the people of Oxford: October 18, 2011, on Magdalen Bridge.

Among his regulars was a man who turned out to be the director of music at Magdalen, which led to Mr Armitage becoming the Magdalen College choir counter-tenor for the next two years.

He says: "For a time I was coaching rowing from 6am to 8am, making coffee until 4pm, then singing from 4.30pm until 7pm.

"That was pretty full-on."

In April 2012, he moved the Vespa to Rad Cam square.

He also bought his first coffee roaster and started buying beans wholesale from South American and African suppliers to create his perfect blend.

In 2013, someone at Oriel mentioned to him that, with the Baby Love bar leaving its unit just off the High Street, the college-owned building was vacant, and would he be interested in running a pop-up cafe?

He snapped up the offer and business boomed: people in Oxford could not get enough of his coffee.

Six months later when Oriel offered him the chance to run another pop-up in a unit right on the High, he countered their offer and asked if he could rent the shop properly.

Alongside his retail success, he had also been fielding growing demands from cafes around the city for his magic beans so, in order to supply them, he started renting a garage behind Arzoo curry house in Jericho to set up a proper roasting operation, becoming Jericho Coffee Traders.

In April, after the lease on the garage ended, he decided to move production to a more stable setting and opened the new roastery and coffee shop on the Osney Mead Industrial Estate.

In October he acquired his biggest coffee roaster yet: as tall as a man and with a flashy digital display, it roasts 6kg of beans in 15 minutes.

He says: "It feels like we've evolved from a cottage industry into a proper business."

Jericho Coffee Traders now supplies 20 city businesses with more than a ton of beans each month, and employs 12 members of staff.

And, as if they weren't busy enough, four months ago Mr and Mrs Armitage welcomed a new member of the clan to their Abingdon Road home: Alfie.

For the first time in his life, it almost looks as if James Armitage might be about to slow down.

"Right now we are in a really good place with business and with family, so for me the focus is just on getting the right balance.

"I don't want to supply the world with coffee: I'd rather keep it small and keep the quality the best it can be."