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Smart keg rental

This summer, Kegstar will start the journey from manual scanning to scan-free technology, enabling a new era of keg tracking and unlocking new efficiencies through the beverage supply chain.
Technology was at the heart of the Kegstar service proposition when the business launched in Australia late 2012 and remains so. We’ve evolved and improved our technology as we’ve grown with customers and new markets. Now we’re going to push the technology boundaries to enable an even more efficient, effective and accurate customer experience.

The result is a new custom-made Kegstar tracker which combines several technologies in one compact unit – including Bluetooth and network-based tracking.

Kegstar’s Head of Technology, Kevin Dinn, is excited to be bringing this to market.

“Kegstar has always been focused on leading the way in technology and helping our customers get their great beverages to happy drinkers. With this next generation of tracking tech, we’re dialling that up! With the new trackers, we’ll have a scan-free, smart keg fleet that will give us all-new capabilities while removing the hassle of scanning and dispatching kegs.”

Kev adds that great progress has already been made. “Late last year we started to test off-the-shelf Bluetooth tracking with some of our customers and partners around the world and got some good results, but Bluetooth alone was never going to deliver our ultimate goal. We now have a new technology in development that will deliver much more robust coverage and supply chain information to make the whole system simpler and faster for everyone.”

This new technology will complement Kegstar’s existing solution of 2D barcodes and RFID – now manually scanned by smartphone or scanner gun – allowing everyone to choose the technology that best fits their purpose. While manual scanning remains valuable in many situations, if a scan is missed it creates challenges with keg costs and visibility. The new bespoke trackers and back-end system won’t rely purely on manual scanning, which is a very exciting prospect in removing manual tasks and time whilst increasing accuracy.

From November 2019, Kegstar will launch its first scan-free tracked kegs in Australia. The fleet will be progressively fitted from early 2020. As the fleet is upgraded, the reliance on manual scanning will disappear, and replaced with a quicker, smarter and better keg solution from Kegstar.

About Kegstar

Kegstar is an asset rental business specialising in smart stainless steel beverage kegs. Under its pooling model, Kegstar owns and manages, on behalf of its customers, a growing pool of 600,000 kegs. Each Kegstar keg is uniquely identified and tracked when the keg moves through the supply chain. Kegstar is part of the global supply-chain logistics company Brambles Limited and currently operates in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the USA and is soon to launch in the Netherlands.

www.kegstar.com