Tosca Digitizes Supply Chain with Help of Belgian Company Sensolus

Ghent, June 7, 2022 – Ghent-based Sensolus, specialized in connected asset management, is entering into a partnership with Tosca, the global player in reusable plastic containers, pallets and bins. The Sensolus platform will be used to map the tens of thousands of reusables pooled among its customers in the US. This digital supply chain allows Tosca to optimize its supply chain to ensure asset availability while reducing its carbon footprint. Tosca will also share these logistics insights with customers, giving more transparency into the journey goods take from source to store shelves. In turn, Tosca’s active input will allow Sensolus to better tailor its platform to the consumer goods industry. The partnership was officially signed in Atlanta during Princess Astrid’s trade tour of the United States.

In 2020 Tosca, with headquarters in Atlanta and Belgium, acquired European pallet pooling market leader Contraload, who was already in partnership with Sensolus to provide IoT. With 100 years of combined experience, Tosca is making supply chains more sustainable by replacing cardboard and wooden packaging with a reusable plastic alternative, from crates for sensitive products such as fruit or eggs to full pallets for heavy loads. Tosca is one of the largest poolers in the world, meaning that major players in consumer goods rely on the market leader to replace their old packaging and manage their entire inbound, outbound and intralogistics flows of reusable packaging, thus saving costs and reducing their carbon footprint.

Optimization and transparency

«The more data you have as a pooler about the locations and condition of your packaging, the better you can optimize your flows and processes, save costs and reduce your footprint,» says Kristoff Van Rattinghe, CEO of Sensolus. «Tosca is now also using the Sensolus platform for this purpose. In it, data from thousands of packages is collected and translated into valuable supply chain insights. In addition, Tosca also shares this data with its customers. In this way, they can meet the desire of consumers who increasingly expect transparency into the logistics and production processes behind the items on store shelves.»

Scalability of platform

Another determining factor in Tosca’s choice of Sensolus was the hardware independence of the Ghent platform. «In a few hours or days, we can integrate new flows and data from tens of thousands of trackers, regardless of the vendor. That makes our solution extremely scalable and means that, as a Belgian scale-up, we can still support a global player like Tosca in a market as immense as the U.S.»

«By relying on Sensolus, their proven technology and user-friendly platform, we can map the supply chain and unify our network of customers,» says Jesse Sels, president EMEA at Tosca. «Therein lies the unique complementarity of Tosca and Sensolus. We share a common goal, which helps us take the next step together and make our vision of optimization and a circular economy a reality faster.»

Best of both worlds

Tosca has a broad experience in packaging and supply chain in the retail and food industry. Sensolus has a deep knowledge of IoT and how data and insights can be made available in a centralized platform. «In that sense, in this partnership we combine the best of both worlds and learn from each other to take a unique position in the ecosystem of supply chain optimization and reusable packaging for the entire food chain, from farm to fork,» says Kristoff Van Rattinghe.

The new partnership was officially signed in Atlanta on June 6. The ceremony took place in the presence of, among others, Princess Astrid, Jan Jambon, Minister-President of the Flemish Government and Flemish Minister of Foreign Affairs and Willy Borsus, Vice-President of Wallonia and Walloon Minister of Foreign Trade and Economy. The delegation, along with 300 delegates from Belgian companies, is currently on a trade tour of the United States. «That says enough about the strength of this partnership and clearly demonstrates the potential that lies in the cooperation between major American players and promising Belgian companies. With Sensolus, moreover, we will not stop here. The supply chain is a global challenge. We will therefore increasingly focus on the American market in order to support our customers there as a software supplier,” concludes Kristoff Van Rattinghe.

About Sensolus

Sensolus is an industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) company that tracks non-powered assets such as trailers, containers, etc. through an end-to-end solution, helping companies make better, data-driven business decisions. The company has years of expertise in telecom, low-power networks, wireless sensor design and cloud-based analytics. Sensolus’ plug-and-play IoT solution includes wireless trackers and an open IoT platform that enables value creation and cost reduction by linking it to enterprise data. In this way, supply chains and logistics processes in which non-powered assets play an important role are optimized.

The Belgian scale-up was founded in 2013 by four IoT enthusiasts and already employs 35 people. It is active in various industries, ranging from aerospace, automotive and logistics to industrial manufacturing and the waste industry. Customers such as Airbus, Atlas Copco and AB InBev call on Sensolus’ IoT solution on a daily basis. More than 150.000 assets are tracked in real time on the platform. For more information: www.sensolus.com.

About Tosca

Tosca is a global leader with more than 100 years combined of experience in reusable plastic packaging solutions and pooling for supply chains. Our unique end-to-end pooling capabilities offers growers, suppliers, and retailers a smarter and more sustainable way to move their products from source to shelf. With a robust portfolio of reusable assets including crates, pallets, bulk containers, dollies and more, we are committed to preserving product quality, reducing shrink, and minimizing labor costs. 

Our dedicated teams of highly accessible and committed individuals walk alongside you to offer a reliable and consistent service across your markets with the resources and power of a pan-European network. With world-beating industry expertise and a focus on innovation, Tosca is revolutionizing the way supply chains move. For more information visit: www.toscaltd.com.