Our client, a food manufacturing company, was seeking to expand production and meet consumer demand. This expansion required increased storage capacity of raw material inputs including bulk agricultural materials. Their existing facility lacked direct rail access, and our client was interested in evaluating the use of pneumatic trucks, requiring installation of a $100,000 pneumatic conveying solution. Additionally, our client was concerned about the cost and availability of pneumatic trucks to support their needs.
The Approach:
Waypost assigned an Advisor with deep experience in bulk agricultural shipping, handling and logistics markets. We worked with the client to evaluate how non-pneumatic equipment could be leveraged. By understanding the dynamics in the lanes from likely material sources to the customer’s facility we were able to assess the max load weights over multiple truck solutions when given the product density.
As a result, Waypost was able to recommend a simple design for a piece of equipment that helped the company to unload hopper trucks and avoid the expense associated with pneumatic unloading systems and trucks.
Finally, we evaluated bulk rail options and was able to identify a transload facility near the customer site. This created opportunities for bulk rail-to-truck transfer, further reducing per-unit logistics costs.
The Results:
Waypost Advisors was able to combine our expertise, market research and creative solutions with our client’s engineering knowledge to leverage a bulk-hopper unload method. This partnership has saved our client 25% in annual transportation costs and the ability to avoid $50,000 in capital expenditure. Additionally, we identified avenues for further saving once the operation was running at scale and the Company could look to leveraging bulk railcar shipments as well.