As part of its continued efforts to crack down on the potential abuse and misuse of its bread baskets and dollies, Bakers Basco is stepping up its technology investment by increasing the number of GPS tracking devices across its bakery equipment pool by 300%.
Working with specialised technology partners, Bakers Basco has introduced a number of new features to the custom branded trackers, including improved battery life and firmware. At the same time, it has implemented Bluetooth search technology with a corresponding app and supporting software to further improve location accuracy.
These improved enhancements will not only extend the battery life of the tracking devices but enable Bakers Basco to track the movements of its returnable transit packaging (RTP) equipment pool even more effectively.
Bakers Basco was set up by five large bakery companies 10 years ago to manage and license a pool of four million bread baskets and dollies for the use of bakers. This latest move follows the successful introduction of GPS technology back in 2015. Since then, the technology has been through a number of significant upgrades and enhancements – the use of which has significantly reduced losses and improved recovery levels by its specialist tactical recovery team in finding and reclaiming missing equipment.
“As part of our efforts to reduce potential equipment abuse, we will shortly be contacting past offenders individually to remind them of our expectations with regards to Basco equipment,” said Richard Mew, General Manager of Bakers Basco. “This approach is part of a broader drive on tackling offenders and we hope it will act as a gentle reminder that we will always follow-up on any reports of misuse or abuse. With the added benefit of GPS tracking as part of our ever-growing technical capabilities, we expect to be more successful with the monitoring of offenders than ever before.”
Bakers Basco is continually trialling and testing the capabilities of this and other technologies with a further roll out of GPS devices planned to follow.
Evidence gathered through the use of GPS-equipped products has already been instrumental in securing judgements in Bakers Basco’s favour in a number of recent court cases and the company is keen to remind past offenders of its commitment to monitoring and tracking potential abuse. For example, it used tracking evidence to help win a bakery tray theft case against a Birmingham reclamation yard in April 2019.
“Our investment in deploying GPS trackers across our pool of four million baskets and 500,000 dollies has really repaid the investment over the past couple of years,” Richard Mew, General Manager, Bakers Basco, commented at the time . “Our latest court victory…was again backed up with solid evidence from GPS tracker units embedded within our equipment, which helps to identify unorthodox movements and subsequent unauthorized possession and use.”
“Our equipment is designed for one sole purpose — to transport bread safely, cost-effectively and in an environmentally-friendly way,” Mew continued. “When people take it like this, the bakeries that pay to license our equipment, the retailers that sell their loaves and the shoppers who rely on them for their daily bread all end up paying extra for the actions of a small number of greedy individuals.”
To find out more about tracking technologies and reusable packaging, be sure to check out RPA’s free white paper, A Smarter, Technology-Driven Supply Chain with Reusable Packaging Systems.