CONNECTIVITY

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY

A key gateway to the South Island, Port Nelson underpins New Zealand’ s economy, handling a diverse range of exports and imports, including forestry products, pipfruit, wine and seafood. Within its warehouses, where palletised bottled wine and empty wine bottles move in and out of the port, forklift operators are required to scan every pallet moved as part of critical inventory and logistics processes. However, the high density block stacking storage used in these warehouses and the complex design of the broader Port site, had created persistent Wi-Fi dead spots and forced staff to change operating processes simply to maintain connectivity.

Blenheim, Spark’ s 5G + Private Network solution uses Ericsson Private 5G to provide a high-availability core at Port Nelson that connects to small cell radios to provide reliable coverage inside the warehouses and across outdoor yard areas. The Port has also deployed Ericsson Cradlepoint ruggedised R1900 routers for forklift connectivity and tracking. The dual-SIM capability of the routers enables switching between Spark’ s public and private 5G networks for when forklifts move outside the initial private 5G coverage areas.

Unlike traditional Wi-Fi, private 5G delivers dedicated, secure, enterprise grade connectivity with predictable performance and pervasive coverage across complex sites like the Port, enabling staff to scan pallets in real time without interruption as they move throughout the sites.

In addition to immediate productivity and staff satisfaction gains, Ericsson’ s NetCloud platform gives Port Nelson improved visibility into connectivity performance, helping teams proactively identify and resolve issues.

A digital push to talk communications platform, enabled by Ericsson Private 5G, will play a key role in strengthening health and safety outcomes by improving real time communications and enabling location-based alerts to help physically separate people from heavy mobile plant. Future applications include geofence intelligence and broadcast messaging. •

“ Connectivity was becoming a real operational constraint for us,” said Reagan Pattison, General Manager Business Transformation at Port Nelson.“ No matter how much we tried to saturate our warehouses with Wi-Fi, we couldn’ t get consistent performance. That impacted productivity, created frustration for our operators and limited our ability to modernise how we work.”

Covering around 30,000 square metres across three warehouses in Nelson and

No matter how much we tried to saturate our warehouses with Wi-Fi, we couldn’ t get consistent performance.

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