Business Profile – Fully charged dairy

BATTERY RELIABILITY

IS KEY FOR FONTERRA FLEET

Fonterra processes more than 80% of New Zealand’s milk, with 30 manufacturing sites countrywide. The global brand runs a fleet of more than 500 truck and trailer units, operating 24/7. Reliability is one of the key tenets for ensuring a smooth operation for such a hard-working fleet.

According to Guy Cooper, Fonterra’s national parts & warranty manager, improving battery reliability across Fonterra’s milk-tanker fleet was vital.

Fonterra introduced the VARTA ProMotive AGM heavy-duty commercialvehicle battery to its fleet in September 2019 through its relationship with its battery supplier, HCB Technologies. Since then, the battery has performed strongly for Fonterra, Guy says.

“Our partnership with HCB goes back beyond 10 years and, in the past 18 months, that high level of engagement between the parties has continued to ensure our needs are met,” he says.

HCB has been New Zealand’s battery specialist for 30 years, offering a wide range and great product depth. It is part of the Bapcor group of companies, the sole distributor for VARTA batteries in Australasia.

As technology advances and the amount of electronic equipment fitted to vehicles grows, demands on batteries in heavy-commercial fleets continue to increase.

It’s no different at Fonterra. The VARTA brand has a solid global reputation for its heavy-commercial vehicle batteries, and Fonterra initially installed VARTA’s ProMotive Super Heavy Duty (N9) model across its fleet before moving to the higher-performing ProMotive EFB (C40) in 2017. The move to VARTA resulted in Fonterra‘s average battery life increasing significantly to about 16-18 months following the introduction of the ProMotive EFB, which, like other batteries before it, was trialled in a small number of tankers before its wider deployment across the fleet.

Guy says the operating environment of the Fonterra milk-collection fleet is harsh, and the batteries can certainly take a hammering.

“More than half the time, the trucks are empty, so they are exposed to a high vibration of a wide variety of road surfaces. This means the batteries are exposed to those same vibrations,” he says.

“We also operate a modern truck fleet, which means the electrical architecture has changed with the introduction of new models. This has required fitment of batteries that can best suit those variations.

“The VARTA battery range has been required to adapt, culminating with the A1 AGM model that is now fitted capable of staying in the truck for less than 700,000km or three years, meaning considerably fewer intervals of swapping out 60kg batteries and resultant downtime.”