Fever-Tree: from bleeding demurrage to holding forwarders to account.

Fever-Tree is a British producer of premium mixers and soft drinks, founded in 2003 and exported to more than 50 countries. With multiple carriers and forwarders moving its goods at any one time, the logistics team was juggling information spread across many systems.

The 2021 and 2022 shipping crises put the supply chain under the spotlight. Costs were running over budget, delay charges kept arriving, and the team had no data it trusted enough to challenge its forwarders.

"We got to a point where we were near enough bleeding demurrage every week," says Sam Presland, Logistics Manager.

Every portal, every day, already out of date.

Every inbound and outbound shipment meant checking another carrier or forwarder portal, every day. Much of what those portals showed was already out of date.

"We were drawn to Beacon initially because of the friendly user experience," says Sam, including a live map of every shipment. Soon the team relied on Beacon for ETAs, for admin, and for keeping other logistics managers, merchandisers and business leaders in the loop.

Keeping inbound teams informed also started to save money on demurrage.

Chicago to Montreal, and nobody said a word.

Accurate ETAs improved stock management, warehouse planning and customer lead times. They also gave Fever-Tree the evidence to hold forwarders to account.

"We had a recent instance where a number of containers were rerouted from Chicago to Montreal, without the forwarder letting us know," says Sam. "Because of Beacon's data and insights we could update our hauliers, warehouses and customers as a result."

Holding forwarders to the SLAs they set.

"We couldn't be sure that our forwarders were using the best allocation on carrier contracts. Now, we're able to hold our forwarders to the SLAs that we set, and make sure they're using the least expensive allocation first."

The team also uses Beacon's reporting to avoid concentrating large volumes on single vessels. That protects the warehouse planning team and avoids extra storage and D&D costs.

D&D charges, coming right down.

Within the first six months, Fever-Tree was giving customers and country managers accurate ETAs ahead of time, and getting great feedback for it. Over the same period, detention and demurrage charges fell. In Sam's words, they "are coming right down".

Implementation was smooth. With one place for all its shipment information, the team saves hours of manual checks and updates. Anyone can follow live containers and set up email notifications when they want them.

"We're able to spot inconsistencies and errors quickly, which means we can resolve problems much faster."