Group business KREON Technology enables operational visibility for new SUPERSPAR store in South Africa.

SPAR, one of the largest retail groups in Southern Africa, operates through a network of independently owned stores supported by centralized wholesale and distribution services. Sosh Plaza SUPERSPAR, a new store in Soshanguve north of Pretoria, recently opened.

To support operational visibility across critical utilities and store infrastructure, Group business KREON Technology recently deployed a new IoT monitoring environment across the complex’s bakery, butchery, fresh produce, refrigeration and frozen goods operations.

The implementation provides centralized visibility into electricity supply and backup generation, water storage, refrigeration performance, store temperature and energy consumption patterns. The primary objectives were to improve utility, strengthen refrigeration oversight and to provide insight into energy demand and cost drivers.

Although only partially deployed, the sections in which the system is operational are already seeing significant operational benefits. Low diesel and backup water levels can now be identified before interruptions occur, and analysis of time-of-use electricity tariffs has enabled optimization of major power consumers including HVAC systems, returning relatively low consumption levels.

Refrigeration monitoring has also highlighted configuration issues and provided insight into defrost cycle behavior, and its impact on operating temperatures.  Additional optimization of maximum demand charges should return further savings, as the deployment expands.

'The real value of the solution was not the technology itself, but the operational insight it created. We did not initially anticipate how quickly our operational staff would become reliant on the data,’ said Kobus Briel, Retailer at Sosh Plaza SUPERSPAR.