Barilla achieves 80% visibility into ocean and over-the-road shipments with FourKites

Barilla, the world leader in pasta production, announced today that it has achieved 80% visibility into the entire lifecycle of its ocean and over-the-road (OTR) shipments, thanks to leading supply chain visibility provider FourKites®. The end-to-end transparency offered by FourKites allows Barilla to see exactly where its goods are anywhere in the supply chain, as well as when they’ll arrive at their final destination. In the face of military conflict in the Red Sea, disruptive weather events and supply shortages, this comprehensive visibility is critical for Barilla to achieve a resilient supply chain that ensures products get to customers in the most efficient way and with the best service.

Barilla has an intricate logistics operation that includes 30 production sites, 15 of which are in Italy and 15 abroad. Each week, the company moves more than 2,000 loads from Italy to over 120 countries via OTR and ocean shipments.

Armed with FourKites’ highly accurate, AI-enabled predictive estimated times of arrival (ETAs), Barilla’s customers can confidently plan their operations around scheduled deliveries. Not only are these ETAs updated in transit, but FourKites highlights incorrect planned transit times to ensure that shipments start — and stay — on schedule.

“Before we started using FourKites’ platform, we could only react to an issue when it was too late,” says Davide Busato, Logistic Competence Center Innovation Project Manager at Barilla. “Now, we react before an issue escalates into a major problem, which saves time while reducing transportation costs and fines. This, in turn, improves our relationships with carriers and customers.”

Ocean shipments are an important part of Barilla’s logistics operation and equal about 10% of its market. Barilla started its collaboration with FourKites by using the company’s OTR visibility and then expanded coverage to include visibility into all its ocean shipments.

“Freight forwarders had overseen Barilla’s ocean shipments, but it was costly and time-consuming because we had to manually check with carriers on the location of shipments,” continues Busato. “Adding FourKites’ ocean visibility to our setup was an obvious choice, and it’s paid off handsomely. Now, we don’t need to spend time hunting for answers and instead can focus on more important tasks like acting on the FourKites data to improve customer satisfaction.”

“With supply chains under enormous pressure due the conflict in the Red Sea and the drought in the Panama Canal, the need for highly accurate supply chain insights is imperative,” says Marc Boileau, Senior Vice President FourKites EMEA. “We’re delighted Barilla is using FourKites to identify exceptions early, so they can take action and prioritize work based on impact. We look forward to continuing our partnership with them.”

“Our goals with FourKites in 2024 are to track 90% of our shipments, reduce penalties with carriers by 5% and decrease inefficient communication with partners by 10-15%. We’re currently well on our way to meeting these metrics,” Busato says.