Case Studies
Case Study #1
Palm Bay International
End-to-End Visibility: From Vineyard to Customer
Palm Bay International, one of the country’s most successful importers of fine wines and spirits has been partnering with Albatrans for over fifteen years. Palm Bay is responsible for an ever growing portfolio consisting of thousands of labels spanning hundreds of suppliers from over twenty countries of origin. Albatrans has emerged to be one of Palm Bay’s long-term premier supply chain partners, providing turnkey freight forwarding services including origin port consolidation, brokerage, booking, customs clearance and bonded services. Albatrans realized it wanted to provide more for Palm Bay, and in 2014 opted to open a warehousing and distribution third party logistics (3PL) company named Alba Wine and Spirits Warehousing and Distribution, LLC – (aka Alba WSD), that specializes in warehousing and distribution of wine and spirits.
Change can always be difficult, especially when you are faced with large volumes, tight windows and a new team. Understanding that moving accurate and relevant supply chain data is as equally important to moving cases of fine wine and spirits, Alba Wine and Spirits assembled a team of seasoned 3PL professionals who have framed a process driven, system integrated, web enabled execution platform to facilitate this endeavor.
Once Alba Wine and Spirits Warehousing and Distribution was fully implemented, both companies would have the ability to enjoy full supply chain visibility; from supplier to origin port to sailing vessel to destination port to warehouse and finally to distributor or retailer.
Proactive communication and consistent, process driven service are fundamental cornerstones to the success of all 3PL- client relationships. Alba WSD has woven these cornerstones into its entire decision making framework for all of its client interactions; ensuring that Palm Bay and more importantly, Palm Bays’ clients have a favorable and well informed customer experience each and every time an order is processed by Alba WSD.
In addition to the end to end supply chain visibility and superior day to day execution, Palm Bay has also realized an overall reduction in its supply chain spend through partnering with Alba WSD, which justifies and quickly diminished any “pain of change” as the growing importer sets its sights on continued expansion.
Alba WSD prides itself on threading its core values into its day to day activities and approach to client satisfaction. Embracing these values, Trustworthy, Responsive, Committed, Safety Focused and Entrepreneurial are what led to a recent success story when Palm Bay tasked Alba WSD with framing out a solution to a unique problem. One of Palm Bays’ suppliers encountered a quality issue at their bottling facility in Europe, which resulted in over seven thousand bottles of wine having packaging product chemically adhered to the bottle caps, rendering all of the units as unsellable. After exhausting all the “usual ways and means” to attempt and clean the caps failed, Palm Bay asked Alba WSD to think outside the norm and see if they could develop a unique solution to the unique issue at hand. Team Alba WSD quickly swung into action, collaborated internally and externally with repeated tests that ultimately yielded a solution that safely, consistently and affordably enabled all seven thousand bottles to be recouped and repackaged as sellable product in less than four working days once the project was started.
“The Alba Wine and Spirits Warehousing and Distribution Team has stepped up and handled everything we could throw at them and more” said Frank Vella, who is responsible for all of Palm Bay’s logistics operations.
Alba WSD recently obtained US CBP Bonded Warehouse status and now offers Palm Bay and all its clients bonded storage services in addition to the other storage service offerings that include ambient storage, chilled storage and high value storage.
Alba WSD continues to make it easy for Palm Bay to partner and scale with a single 3PL that can offer the origin to consumer inventory accountability, warehousing, value added services and complete distribution. To do this, the Alba WSD Team has created and continuously balances its integrated operating platform of people, process and systems to proactively address Palm Bays needs while using real-time data to assist in making the most informed and efficient decisions based on relevant supply chain data analysis.
For more information, contact us here.
