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Pasta evangelist for FourKites

[ March 7, 2024   //   ]

Italian pasta giant Barilla says it has achieved 80% visibility into the entire lifecycle of its ocean and road shipments, thanks to the FourKites platform. It allows the family-owned firm – whose brands also include Pasta Evangelists, Pavesi, Vesta, and Back to Nature – to see where its goods are anywhere in the supply chain, as well as arrival at final destination.

Barilla has an intricate logistics operation that includes 30 production sites, 15 of them in Italy. Each week, the company moves more than 2,000 loads from Italy to over 120 countries by road or sea.

AI-enabled predictive estimated times of arrival (ETAs) allows Barilla’s customers to confidently plan their operations around scheduled deliveries, says FourKites. ETAs are updated in transit and the system also highlights any that are incorrect.

Davide Busato, innovation project manager at Barilla’s Logistic Competence Centre said: “Before we started using FourKites’ platform, we could only react to an issue when it was too late. Now, we react before an issue escalates into a major problem, which saves time while reducing transportation costs and fines. This, in turn, improves our relationships with carriers and customers.”

Barilla started its collaboration with FourKites by using the company’s visibility for road shipments and then expanded coverage to include visibility into all its ocean shipments, which account for about 10% of its business.

“Freight forwarders had overseen Barilla’s ocean shipments, but it was costly and time-consuming because we had to manually check with carriers on the location of shipments,” continues Busato. “Adding FourKites’ ocean visibility to our setup was an obvious choice, and it’s paid off handsomely. Now, we don’t need to spend time hunting for answers and instead can focus on more important tasks like acting on the FourKites data to improve customer satisfaction.”

FourKites EMEA senior vice president, Marc Boileau, added: “With supply chains under enormous pressure due to the conflict in the Red Sea and the drought in the Panama Canal, the need for highly accurate supply chain insights is imperative. We’re delighted Barilla is using FourKites to identify exceptions early, so they can take action and prioritize work based on impact. We look forward to continuing our partnership with them.”

Barista aims to track 90% of its shipments with FourKites in 2024, reduce penalties with carriers by 5% and decrease inefficient communication with partners by 10-15% and is currently well on our way to meeting these targets, Busato says.

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