ABINBEV AFRICA ACHIEVES REMARKABLE SAVINGS ON FUEL IN AWARD-WINNING PROJECT USING OMNICOMM SOLUTIONS

Brewing giant ABInBev Africa cuts fuel costs and wins Enviro Award and Gold Award at 2019 Logistics Achievement Awards.

ABInBev Africa needed an effective fuel monitoring solution to account for fuel accurately and gain visibility into cost-saving opportunities. Local partner Sunstone Logistic Systems implemented a complete fuel monitoring solution that uses OMNICOMM fuel-level sensors, enabling ABInBev Africa to achieve impressive fuel savings, reduce adverse driver behavior, cut CO2 emissions and more.
With a rise in household incomes and demand for consumer products such as brewed beverages in many African countries, ABInBev is investing significantly in this emerging market through its subsidiary, ABInBev Africa.

ABInBev Africa realised that fuel expenditure was a large contributor to their logistics costs. Lacking accurate measurement and analysis tools for recording, predicting and monitoring fuel usage, the company sought a fuel monitoring solution.

THE NUMBERS

850
trucks fitted with OMNICOMM fuel-level sensors
7
countries involved in simultaneous project
4
months to ROI
99.2%
accuracy of OMNICOMM fuel-level sensor

THE CHALLENGE

THE SOLUTION

ABInBev Africa needed to tackle low visibility into cost-saving opportunities and delays in decision-making processes that resulted from the absence of accurate fuel accounting.

As Talitha Alink, Project Manager, Logistics at ABInBev Africa, explains, “We were interested in cost-effective solutions that would be able to solve the fuel measurement issue in a short period of time, enhance driver behavior management and achieve global KPIs in logistics performance and budgets.”

Sunstone Logistic Systems equipped 850 trucks in 7 countries with OMNICOMM fuel-level sensors that offer 99.2% guaranteed fuel measurement accuracy. This is significantly above the industry standard of 98% accuracy, giving ABInBev Africa more precise data to improve budgeting and forecasting of fuel expenditure and increase visibility to identify costs.

Live fuel data from the sensors is transmitted every 30 seconds via serial connection to a telemetry device, which is synchronized to a cloud platform. Raw data is automatically analyzed and transformed into KPIs and metrics.

THE RESULTS

As a result of the project, ABInBev Africa has experienced positive changes in terms of fuel expenditure, adverse driver behavior and more. The project was recognized with one of ABInBev's internal 2018 Best Practice Awards and achieved ROI in just 4 months.

  • Remarkable fuel savings in 2018 versus 2017
  • Reduced fuel fraud
  • Decrease in idling time
  • Significant reduction in speeding events
  • Reduced CO2 emissions, equivalent to 25,440 trees absorbing CO2 per country, per month

The project partners won the Enviro Award and Gold Award at the 2019 Logistics Achiever Awards, judged by a committee representing the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, SA Association of Freight Forwarders, Road Freight Association and other market experts.

ABInBev Africa and Sunstone Logistic Systems intend to build on the success of this project with full integration of OMNICOMM's fuel probe solution into the standard operating procedure in more countries, deeper integration of fuel consumption by vehicle into the route optimization tool, the use of mobile apps and fully auditable reporting on fuel saved to take advantage of energy usage rebates.

CUSTOMER REFERENCE

“Besides the economic impact, we also achieved corporate sustainability targets. Due to the reduction in fuel consumption, our decrease in CO2 emissions in one country over the course of one month is equivalent to the CO2 absorption power of 25,440 trees,” – Talitha Alink, Project Manager, Logistics at ABInBev Africa.