// CASE STUDY //
Port Nelson is a commercial port on the South Island in New Zealand, handling a diverse range of exports and imports. Connectivity was becoming an operational constraint. To improve warehouse productivity, safety and real-time workflows, it deployed a reliable private 5G network with the help of Spark and Ericsson.
PORT NELSON DEPLOYS PRIVATE 5G NETWORK WITH SPARK AND ERICSSON
ort Nelson, a commercial
P port in New Zealand, has deployed a private 5G network in partnership with Spark New Zealand and Ericsson Enterprise Wireless Solutions, marking a major step forward in connectivity, safety and productivity across its warehousing operations.
A key gateway to the South Island, Port Nelson underpins New Zealand’ s economy, handling a diverse range of exports and imports, including forestry products, pipfruit, wine and seafood. Within its warehouses, where palletised bottled wine and empty wine bottles move in and out of the port, forklift operators are required to scan every pallet moved as part of critical inventory and logistics processes. However, the high density block stacking storage used in these warehouses and the complex design of the broader port site had created persistent Wi-Fi dead spots and forced staff to change operating processes simply to maintain connectivity.
“ Connectivity was becoming a real operational constraint for us,” said Reagan Pattison, General Manager Business Transformation at Port Nelson.“ No matter how much we tried to saturate our warehouses with Wi-Fi, we couldn’ t get consistent performance. That impacted productivity, created frustration for our operators and limited our ability to modernise how we work.”
Covering around 30,000 square metres across three warehouses in Nelson and Blenheim, Spark’ s 5G + Private Network solution uses Ericsson Private 5G to provide a high-availability core at Port Nelson that connects to small cell radios to provide reliable coverage inside the warehouses and
14 Intelligent SME. tech