Australian supermarket chain Coles is running track-and-trace of its poultry supply chain, based on an IoT tracking and monitoring solution by pallet pooling company Loscam and local Sigfox operator Thinxtra. The pair has attached sensors to 4,500 poultry ‘bins’ (containers) moving between its suppliers’ farms and processing facilities and its own distribution centre. Coles has reduced container costs by 25 percent by optimising usage and retrieval rates, it said.
Coles announced a digital transformation strategy in 2021, including to increase the resiliency of its logistics operations, notably cold-chain transportation of poultry supplies. It issued a tender for a solution to reduce lost and mishandled food bins, and to improve asset pooling and stock turnaround. The joint bid from Loscam and Thinxtra, now live, proposed new “smart and foldable” food bins, made by the former, to be tracked on the latter’s network.
The battery-powered units, cited as “more innovative and cost-effective”, measure location, temperature, and shock. They have a five-year battery life, said a statement. Data from the sensors, available in Loscam’s cloud platform, is being used to optimise transport routes and equipment pooling, based on usage patterns. Coles can view the location of each asset in transit; alerts are issued when food bins go off course, or are mishandled or knocked.
Cold-chain temperature monitoring provides quality assurance, said Coles. A statement said: “The solution reduces the cost of the asset pool by 25 per cent, tripling the amount of empty bins returned, reducing cost and waste.” It said it created “accountability for stock quality supported by reliable real-time data”, and reduced energy consumption in support of its ESG objectives.
It said: “The solution provides data for each individual smart food bin, rather than just the trucks transporting them… It has enabled a connected and transparent supply chain with timely insights into geolocation, geofencing, shock impact events, temperature, and bin status, and allows Coles to optimise transport routes and equipment pooling based on usage patterns.”
Larry Kavanagh, general manager for meat processing at Coles, said: “We partnered with Loscam to deploy a purpose-built device [for]… our protein cold-chain department, giving full visibility into our supply chain operations in real time… The smart food bins ensure we can track the poultry from the moment it is loaded by our suppliers… to when it reaches our distribution centre, reinforcing our food safety standards, while saving time and waste.”
Daniel Bunnett, executive vice president at Loscam, said: “IoT has introduced the capabilities of asset management beyond traditional RFID or GPS tracking, with sensors that can provide insights to optimise logistical operations… Our IoT devices give Coles a sustainable, more efficient way of transporting perishable poultry produce, and managing its returnable industrial packaging, all while reducing resource waste.”
Nicholas Lambrou, chief executive at Thinxtra, said: “Coles has been able to deploy IoT technology to achieve economic viability and operational scalability through streamlining its critical supply chain operations. The IoT-powered smart food bins give full traceability of quality assurance and efficiency within the protein cold chain, all while saving Coles business costs by avoiding unnecessary damages and better pooling equipment for transport.”
