Peloris | In the News

As IT business leaders look ahead to the technology trends and innovations likely to shape organisations over the coming year, one important question is how effectively these technologies will integrate with to a company’s overall digital transformation strategy.

Telstra’s experience in working across a diverse range of IT environments globally has found that successful adoption of new technologies, such as real-time analytics and cyber security, demands a break from the siloed thinking that often influences decision making.

An example of this working seamlessly is our work with M2M connectivity to help a supply chain company, exporting company, Peloris, ship fresh milk from Australia to China. By noticing the impact of drones and robotics in agriculture, there was a logical extension to use ‘Internet of Things’ technology to solve supply chain issues.

With China’s stringent import regulations on fresh milk, coupled with a short shelf life, milk export to China was previously impossible. Peloris successfully surpassed this barrier with real-time monitoring technology that helped both the company and China customs to observe temperature and conditions from the farm to its final destination.

By adopting IoT technology which underpin solutions with connectivity, we enabled and furthered Peloris’ business, which has now allowed them to supply 40% of all fresh milk into China worldwide.

Through these various experiences, this has led us to work with a “geo-digital” mindset, to help and encourage customers to successfully navigate the complex range of technological, business and cultural obstacles associated with true digital transformation.

Read the full Information Age article Siloed Thinking will lead to Siloed Digital Transformation Strategies.

Want to discuss how your fresh food brand can benefit with China market access solutions?

With China extending tariff cuts at the end of the year to a range of Australian fresh fruit and vegetables, nuts, seafood and pork, local producers looking to access this lucrative market are being urged to start planning now.

Demand for selected Australian fresh food is expected to soar when tariff cuts of up to 30% on some products come into effect in 2019.

Peter Verry, director of leading Australian cold chain consultancy, Peloris, stressed the importance of allowing plenty of time to prepare for exporting to China.

“Typically it can take up to 12 months or even longer to receive the appropriate credentials and authority to export certain products to China,” he said.

“Failure to adequately understand China quarantine and customs requirements resulted in 160 Australian manufacturers being placed on a black list and 406 shipments dumped or returned in 2017 because of non-compliance. In some cases the mistake was as simple as a non-compliant product label.”

Mr Verry said demand within China for Australian produce, which is highly prized by the Chinese for its image of being green and clean, meant China was now Australia’s largest food export market.

“We have witnessed an unprecedented demand for products such as fresh milk (which sells for more than $10 per litre) and fresh beef over the past three years.

“The cuts in tariffs, which will come into effect in January 2019, can only benefit producers who are prepared to invest the time and effort to get their goods on the shelves.”

The China Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA), which came into effect in 2015, is a phased program of tariff reduction for goods and services.

Mr Verry said one of the greatest hurdles facing exporters was developing a market profile.

“There are 34 provinces, municipalities and territories in China and it is unlikely an Australian producer will have the resources to service demand in all those areas. We suggest looking at regions and cities where there is limited import competition and start to build a profile in anticipation of the tariff cuts, leveraging off Australia’s reputation for quality produce.

“Doing business in China is rewarding but requires significant advance planning and commitment, and there is a risk that if producers don’t start laying the groundwork now they will miss out altogether. Issues such as protecting intellectual property and cultivating appropriate partnerships can be time-consuming but are worth the effort.”

On January 1, 2019 the following cuts will apply to fresh food:

Elimination of the 10 to 30 per cent tariff on fruit (except citrus) by 1 January 2019
Pork Tariffs of up to 20 per cent will be eliminated by 1 January 2019.
Elimination of the 10 to 13 per cent tariff on all fresh vegetables by 1 January 2019.
Elimination of eight to 15 per cent tariff on selected seafood.

A full list of tariff cuts can be found here:

https://dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/chafta/fact-sheets/Documents/fact-sheet-agriculture-and-processed-food.pdf

Information on import shipment failures and import watchlist can be accessed at the following websites (Chinese only – please call Peloris for additional information): http://jckspaqj.aqsiq.gov.cn/jcksphzpfxyj/jjspfxyj

http://jckspaqj.aqsiq.gov.cn/jckspwgqymd

To learn more about how you can benefit by working with Peloris, contact us.

*This article was first published in Australasian Farmers’ & Dealers’ Journal.

Today the world is characterised by intense disruption and change, but it’s not necessarily all about what’s around the corner.

Businesses, regardless of what industry they are in, are all facing the same challenge – or opportunity depending on how you look at it.

It’s about deciding how to capture the opportunity of today – the new technologies, new capabilities and skills to invest in – and how that will shape a tomorrow where everything that can be connected will be connected and automated.

Peloris is now responsible for about 40 per cent of all fresh milk exports into China. This was made possible through the introduction of the Internet of Things technology into their supply chain.

The team from Peloris can access data in real time to assure the quality of the milk, monitoring its temperature all the way from the farm to when it arrives in China.

This visibility and transparency at all stages of the supply chain has helped improve overall efficiency and has been endorsed by China Inspection and Quarantine Bureau for rapid border clearance for China food imports. What used to take two to three weeks can now happen in just 36 hours.

What is even more exciting are the opportunities IoT technology has opened up for Peloris. The company is already developing channels to market for other short shelf life products into China and new markets across Asia. They have opened a new office in Malaysia which has potential to be a hub for the distribution of dairy, meat, fruit, vegetables and chilled seafood from Australia into the ASEAN region including Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Read the full Telstra Exchange article Today’s Challenges are Tomorrow’s Opportunities.

Want to discuss how your fresh food brand can benefit with China market access solutions?

Telstra, Peloris, Chinese quarantine, Sendum, M2M Connectivity, and multiple Australian milk producers are bringing fresh dairy to China within 36 hours, with the companies using IoT sensors for tracking and temperature monitoring.

In an effort to improve the quality and speed of fresh produce, dairy, and seafood imports into China, companies have begun looking towards Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, Telstra and its cool chain services partner Peloris have told ZDNet.

Telstra had already been emphasising the use of IoT for Australia’s agricultural industry, including connecting vineyards and farms; acquiring GPS and telematics solutions provider MTData to bolster agricultural technologies; and encouraging the development of agricultural IoT solutions in its new IoT hub.

It was then simply a matter of expanding Telstra’s agricultural solutions to the cold chain, Peloris MD Peter Verry told ZDNet, for their fresh milk project with M2M Connectivity, Sendum, multiple milk producers, and China Inspection Quarantine (CIQ).

As a result, the 7,000km journey of milk from Australian factory to Chinese store has been reduced from taking up to three weeks to just under two days.

“The way we delivered that and managed to negotiate what is now 36-hour clearance for fresh milk was to utilise the technology that’s been used for a long time in the farm sphere with the Internet of Things,” Verry told ZDNet.

“You’ve got farm bots and drones, and automatic weeding systems, and all sorts of technology being used in farming — what we did is we transferred that technology approach into the supply chain.

“It’s not anything more than just applying technology that’s available through the Telstra network and using the Telstra device specifically to provide that product’s integrity, process, transparency, and border compliance.”

Specifically, Telstra and Peloris are using a Sendum data logger device to measure temperature and location in real time, which uploads the information to the cloud every 15 minutes.

The Sendum device additionally measures light emissions, tilt monitoring, humidity, and air pressure, with Verry saying “there are still technologies that can be linked to provide a holistic solution”.

As milk needs to be stored at between 0 and 4 degrees Celsius from start to finish in order to fulfil specified health and safety requirements, the information is likewise uploaded to the CIQ server every 15 minutes.

“The biggest challenge has been working with China Inspection Quarantine, because like all government departments, they tend to lag a bit behind time in terms of their innovative thinking — but we’re now at a point where our server is connected directly to the China CIQ server,” Verry told ZDNet.

“So they actually have visibility of a pallet of fresh milk from the A2 factory in Smeaton Grange [in South West Sydney] all the way through to the customer delivery, whether that’s in Beijing or Guangzhou.

“We’re the only company in the world that has a direct link to their system and provides this information.”

Giving CIQ visibility of this data therefore fast-tracks the process of being approved and allowed into the country, he said.

“That technology allows us via the Telstra Sendum device to guarantee the integrity of the product, so the brand owner is confident that the product is transported and arrives at the right temperature; it allows the China Inspection Quarantine officials to see that the product meets all the relevant standards and has been transported at the right temperature as well, and hasn’t been compromised in the process; and it also provides the traceability of the shipment from the factory floor through to the customer,” Verry said.

While tracking ends when the pallet of milk is unpacked by a supermarket or grocery store, Verry said the end consumer can also gain access to information by scanning the barcode.

By comparison, Verry said solutions when Peloris had first started looking into IoT technology tended to “end at the border” — so companies had no visibility of what happened to their product once it left Australia.

According to Verry, Peloris chose to go with Telstra’s solution after going to market for technology that provided “transparency and integrity”.

The real-time nature of Telstra’s device and solution was what swayed the company, he said, as it fulfilled the expectations from the milk producer, CIQ, and consumer of retaining product integrity “from gate to plate”.

In terms of connectivity, Verry said Telstra’s network provides the company with full coverage using 4G and GPS with satellite triangulation once the product leaves Australia.

While in-flight, the device is not allowed to transmit, but airlines have approved the collection of data throughout the flight to China.

“When it goes up in the air, it sort of goes into hibernation based on the altitude, and then when the plane comes down, it wakes up and the data is still being recorded and it just sends it all off straight away,” Verry explained.

The centre of such solutions remains connectivity, executive director of Premier Business at Telstra Business Andrew Wildblood argued, saying that Telstra’s plans for providing a mesh of networks — including gigabit 4G, 5G, Cat-M1 IoT, and narrowband IoT — will continue to provide the best coverage for IoT.

“There’s a coverage element in [choosing Telstra] in terms of particularly if you think forward looking of what we’re going to be doing in our Cat-M1 network and 5G and then low-powered devices,” Wildblood told ZDNet.

“When you start to overlay this 5G network that will come through in 2018, the coverage gets better, the sensors get cheaper and lower powered … that opens up a whole new market, and the part of the challenge for the next frontier of course is total coverage for remote and rural farming.”

Telstra has worked with Peloris on ensuring connectivity even while inside insulated trucks by installing repeaters, providing “visibility from start to finish”, Verry said.

Having just delivered its 2 millionth litre of milk to China without a single failure, Peloris is now responsible for 40 percent of all fresh milk exports into China globally.

Looking ahead, it is planning to bring its solution to other fresh produce imports across Asia, including delivering seafood, dairy, meat, fruit, and vegetables to Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

Such IoT solutions require a “consortium” of companies, Wildblood added, with each solving a different piece of the puzzle.

“Cracking the code on these opportunities in IoT is no single partner in isolation,” Wildblood told ZDNet.

“There’s no way Telstra can just do things because we’ve got a network … we don’t have the complete answer, but when you start to dig into the ecosystem, you’ve got to think about the universities, you’ve got to think about the tractor manufacturers, you’ve got to think about software companies, you’ve got to think about our network, our sensors, drones, cloud providers.”

According to Wildblood, up to 10 technology partners are often required to mesh their applications, software, devices, and solutions together for each IoT project.

“There’s no single silver bullet in this.”

Read the full ZDNet article How an IoT sensor is helping Australian milk reach China faster.

Want to discuss how your fresh food brand can benefit with China market access solutions?

Peloris is pleased to announce that our China sister entity, Suzhou Peloris Trading Co., Ltd (SPT) has been appointed as one of 60 Executive Standing Committee members within the China Chamber of Commerce of Foodstuffs and Native Produce (CFNA).

This organisation, which was formed back in 1988, encourages a fair and orderly market, protects the interests and lawful rights of its members and of the industry and assists members to explore market opportunities. The organisation is also an advocate for its members in contributing suggestions and opinions from members and the industry with the government in the formulation of new policies.

CFNA currently has almost 7,000 members (importers and exporters), mostly within the heavily regulated high-risk food categories where import quotas and other non-tariff barriers make international trade more complex, and the organisation can assist these members with interpreting technical data and policy directives as well as advocating with the central authorities on their members’ behalf.

As an Executive Standing Committee member, SPT will have direct access and input into China food import policy discussions and directives. This will further enhance the quality of the market access consultancy services Peloris provides its clients to reduce the level of regulatory uncertainty that many producers and exporters currently experience.

Want to discuss how your fresh food brand can benefit with China market access solutions?

Peloris is proud to have been recognised as the NSW Emerging Explorer at the Premier’s NSW Export Awards.

The Export Council of Australia (ECA) recognised the Export Award winners announced at one of Sydney’s most prestigious presentation events – the Premier’s NSW Export Awards.

The Awards recognise New South Wales companies for their contribution to the state and national economy.

As a leading advocate for international trade, the ECA, in conjunction with the NSW Government is honoured to manage this state wide competition where nominees secure their reputation on the world stage.

Chief Executive Officer, ECA Lisa McAuley said “given the announcement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), acknowledging exporters is vital in building awareness of these new market opportunities available to business owners. We are seeing more and more new companies that are exporting their goods and services with excellent results.

“NSW exporters have a long and positive future when it comes to trade. Given the recent signing of Free Trade Agreements (FTA’s) now is the time to focus on how we can help build on Australia’s trade capabilities and encourage more companies to look at the global opportunities that are opening up,” Ms McAuley said, adding “We need to take advantage of the market opportunities created by the North Asian FTA’s and now the potential of the TPP Agreement and recognise the success of those clever companies that are really making waves overseas.”

Read the full article at The Daily Bulletin.

When Australian dairy Norco Cooperative secured a fast-track fresh milk export pipeline to China, our Managing Director Peter Verry was featured to discuss how Peloris was involved in securing the deal. The fast-track quarantine clearance for fresh milk exports slashed the time it takes for Australian fresh milk to reach consumers in China to only seven days.

The agreed quarantine process was secured after 12 months of collaboration between Peloris and Chinese officials to develop “rigourous quality assurance protocols that have now been fully tested and officially sanctioned by the relevant Chinese agencies”.

“The cold chain pipeline solution incorporates stringent quality assurance controls that ensure the fresh milk meets or exceeds China’s food and safety standards, that the product is maintained at the optimal temperature at all times during transit, and incorporates an innovative product security system that identifies and tracks the location of individual units,’ said Peter.

Read the full article at the Daily Reporter.

Want to discuss how your fresh food brand can benefit with China market access solutions?

Fresh Australian milk has hit the shelves in Chinese supermarkets for the first time since a trade deal was struck by farmers to speed up the process of quarantine.

With milk selling at up to $9 a litre in China it is set to provide a lucrative new source of income for dairy farmers in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland, who have suffered in recent times due to drought and Australian supermarket ‘milk wars’.

Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce said the deal would see an additional 20 million litres of milk exported to China over the next year.

‘With potential retail prices in China of $7 to $9 per litre of milk, this government strongly supports industry initiatives like this as they help our valuable agriculture sector improve international competitiveness, which also contributes significantly to better returns for producers at the farmgate,’ Mr Joyce said.

The deal cuts quarantine assessment time from two-to-three weeks down to about eight days, meaning fresh Australian pasteurised milk can now be sent to China within its shelf life.

The new quality assurance protocols were developed by industry body Dairy Connect NSW, agricultural co-op Norco and export consulting firm Peloris Global Sourcing Pty Ltd along with Chinese officials.

Read the full article at the Daily Mail.