AJ Networks, a player in South Korea’s closed-loop pallet rental market, has connected 10,000 plastic pallets on AMO-SNet’s Sigfox network.

This is the first asset tracking system of its kind in South Korea’s pallet pooling business using a tracker designed by Alps, a manufacturer of electromechanical devices. 

Every year, about a tenth of pallets go missing around the world. While asset owners are aware of those losses, not many were able to determine what happened to them.

AJ Network is a Kospi-listed company that offers integrated pallet and logistics management services to consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, electronics, chemical, petrochemical, machinery manufacturers and other industries in South Korea. Its customers include LG, CJ, Samsung, Emart, Costco, Lotte Mart, GS and Coupang. The company owns 17 million plastic pallets and produces one million new plastic pallets annually. To reduce the loss of pallets and to manage asset volumes in warehouses efficiently, it decided to partner with AMO-Snet to build an IoT-based asset-tracking system for its pallet pooling business.

“We have established a long-term plan to work with AMO-SNet to integrate this new asset-tracking system in our company,” said Sung-Woo, Ko, manager of AJ Networks. “Our goal is to optimise our pallet rental system and improve overall logistic service competitiveness through data insights that will help us efficiently manage inventory, storage and delivery status, along with return and collection requests of customers, so they can get the right pallet they need in the right quantities in the right places, at the right time.”

Jae-Chul, Chung, senior manager of Alps in Korea, added: “The asset tracker deployed by AJ Networks employs the Sigfox Atlas wifi service combining low-power wide area [LPWA] communication technology with position information from wifi access points. This goes beyond the limitations of the existing RFID pallet incoming and outgoing tracking management system and tracks the real-time location and movement route without a separate reader installed on the site to monitor the status information of their plastic pallets.”

Traditional asset trackers that rely on 3G and GPS are usually not suitable for tracking returnable assets such as pallets as 90% of them are usually found indoors, out of reach of GPS signals. In this use case, the Alps tracker that relies on Sigfox 0G technology and wifi lets AJ Networks track its pallets over their useful lifespan of up to seven years.

“We are pleased to support AJ Network on their journey to transform the pallet pooling industry in South Korea,” said Seung-Hwan Song, sales director of AMO-SNet. “As a key telecommunication business operator, AMO-SNet is providing Sigfox 0G network nationwide. It provides stable Sigfox 0G network quality to customers with high coverage of about 91% of the population and, based on this, AJ Networks’ pallet tracking business is expected to be carried out smoothly.”

The explosion of ecommerce globally has led to freight being transported on tighter deadlines, increasing the need to transport efficiently. The asset tracker created by Alps is powered by Sigfox 0G technology that can be deployed in more than 70 countries immediately and is owned by Singapore firm UnaBiz.

Freight volumes vary with the seasons and logistics players must be ready to keep pace with demand fluctuations of logistics assets. A shortage of pallets during peak seasons would delay deliveries, while redundancy means higher storage costs.

“The pallet rental market is an essential part of the logistics business, which means companies can make savings and increase efficiency by making the right choice of pallet system,” said Loic Barancourt, chief commercial officer of UnaBiz. “As supply chain and logistics players around the world struggle with rising costs, UnaBiz is pleased to offer ultra-low-cost options that can help companies manage resources and assets more efficiently and achieve their ESG goals.”