Ensuring the quality of wine, oil and beer during transport by tracking beverages from the producer to the point of sale (wine shops, restaurants, retail) with the Wenda Platform and IoT sensors that record temperature, allows the companies involved to significantly increase the visibility of their international supply chains and deliver products in the best possible quality.

The challenge

It is well known that the journey of wine, beer and oil from the producer to the retailer up to the final consumer is a complex process, made up of several variables that can adversely affect the quality of beverages, since under normal conditions it is difficult to ensure that products remain intact along the supply-chain, that they do not exceed critical thresholds of temperature parameters for their ideal preservation, and that they therefore remain intact in their original characteristics, as conceived by the producer.
Wine shipments - but also beer and oil shipments - especially when directed to international customers, travel long logistical routes, with many stops and carrier changes. If placed under stress conditions, some delicate products can undergo sudden changes in colour and taste, risking to not fully meet consumers' expectations and, in the most extreme cases, to constitute a Food Safety issue.

Responding to such risks, this use case developed by Wenda in collaboration with SIVE, VINIDEAs, Highclere Consulting and VINIDEA as a grant agreement №731884 in the framework of IOF2020 - framed in Horizon 2020, a EU innovation and research programme - provides information on the distribution process for all actors involved.
The project involves more than 20 wineries, breweries and oil mills, coming from 8 different EU Countries, that carry out international shipments (some of them to USA and Asia) of wine, beer and oil. Below is a more detailed list of the companies involved:

• Italy: 11 (10 wine, 1 beer)
• Switzerland: 1 (wine)
• Spain: 3 (wine)
• Portugal: 3 (2 wine, 1 oil)
• Hungary: 1 (wine)
• Czech Republic: 1 (beer)
• Romania: 1 (wine)
• France: 1 (champagne)

Our solution

An integrated system has been created to monitor the entire wine and beverages distribution channel with the aim of achieving end-to-end visibility of temperature data and traceability of the supply chains in which products shipped from producers to their retail customers travel. In addition to the end-to-end visibility of the supply chains crossed by the products already mentioned, the Wenda Platform has allowed to establish a direct relationship between producers and retailers through a mobile App.
The App also helped prevent damage caused by shipping and storage integrity issues, by sharing an extensive database of temperature issues found in the supply chain to plan secure shipments based on reliable data, allowing new and customized IoT-based insurance policies. This through a data aggregation and analysis system, based on temperature data loggers, to track the integrity of beverages during distribution, monitoring temperature and traceability data and evaluating quality through analysis.

All this was made possible by a Platform that analyzes and displays the information recorded during the journey by a bluetooth data logger inserted in each box, in order to confirm the integrity of the beverages. The Shipment module of the Wenda Platform was the key element that allowed the execution of these operations, and the final retailer who received the package with wine, oil or beer was provided with a mobile App that allowed to download the data from the bluetooth data logger placed in each box containing the product: in addition to the temperature data, the retailer had a form to get in touch directly with the producer, and was guaranteed the possibility to receive from the producers themselves - always through the mobile App - marketing contents to present to theirs final customer.

Finally, the insurance part: the temperature sensors inside the bluetooth data loggers have provided relevant data on each shipment, which can be used as objective feedback to achieve cost reductions in insurance policies.

Find out what the Wenda Platform modules offer!

The technological elements involved were the following:

• The cloud Platform, which stores data from the devices, conducts elaborate analysis, aggregates trends and provides information on customizable interfaces for the decision-making processes of each company involved;
• The mobile App, which is the command interface of the devices: it turns them on and off, and at any time, with the data logger nearby, it can read all data and spot alerts;
• The bluetooth data loggers, which monitor and record the temperature of the beverages during the transport phases from the manufacturer to the final retailer, thus acting as enablers of the solution.

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Benefits

OVERALL BENEFITS

• Reduce damage to the product due to inappropriate temperature during shipping and distribution;
• Deliver the products to consumers in the best possible conditions;
• Establish a direct link between producers and retailers;
• Build a valuable database on beverage logistics worldwide;
• Test the IoT system in collaboration with a network of about 60 stakeholders.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS

• Monitoring beverage conditions during distribution allows retailers and end users to gain knowledge about the journey, which in turn makes it easier:
• Lower shipping costs for beverages;
• Reduction in customer complaints and trade disputes;
• Possibility of insurance coverage.

OTHER BENEFITS

• Creation of a direct relationship between producer and final retailer;
• Guaranteeing the quality of wine and beverages during transport;
• Making the wine and beverages distribution process more transparent;
• Increase consumer satisfaction;
• Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions related to the transport of beverages, thanks to better planning of shipments and lower returns or destruction of bottles.