Australia’s Port Kembla Coal Terminal Selects Quintiq to Maximise Throughput and Coal Chain Efficiencies

MELBOURNE, Australia - Quintiq, a leading provider of Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) solutions, today announced that Port Kembla Coal Terminal (PKCT) has chosen Quintiq to maximize its current capacity capabilities and provide seamless integration across its coal supply chain. The implementation, being handled by Quintiq, began in July and will be completed in early 2010.

PKCT, an Australian coal exporting terminal located south of Sydney on Australia’s east coast, handles in excess of 13 million tonnes of coal annually serving 12 mines. Coal is delivered to Port Kembla via both road and rail and is stored in a stockyard on site until the cargo is assembled, reclaimed and taken by conveyor to waiting ships. In 2009, 226 ships were loaded with more than 13.2 million tonnes of coal and almost 400,000 tonnes of coke bound for ports throughout Asia, India and Europe. The challenges of handling the receipt, storage and dispatch of such large volumes of coal, including coordinating train and truck unloading, optimal ship loading and managing onsite storage, together create a highly complex planning puzzle. Added to this complexity are fluctuations in demands and resource capacity limitations.

PKCT expects the Quintiq solution to maximize the throughput of the terminal by increasing the utilization of its stock yard, machinery and other critical port assets. Moreover, Quintiq will advance the planning process by automating many planning functions, by shifting PKCT’s embedded knowledge to the planning solution and by providing expert decision support. The benefits of the system will be organization-wide visibility, increased planner independence and a more efficient coal supply chain.

The Quintiq solution is an integrated operational planning solution which provides real time visibility across the Port Kembla Coal Supply Chain, covering the movement of coal from mine load point to vessel departures across multiple time horizons. This includes day of operation scheduling for operational activities and the creation of jobs; operational planning to maximize throughput on a daily basis; tactical planning to resolve imbalances in supply and demand on a rolling weekly basis; and long-term planning to resolve imbalances in supply and demand on a macro level. The Quintiq solution also provides what-if scenario capabilities so PKCT can fully understand the consequences of planning decisions on the coal supply chain.

The integrated solution will enable stakeholders to make informed decisions on the parts of the supply chain that they control and influence, and will help PKCT strive for their goal of increasing efficiencies and visibility across the supply chain.

“We were looking for an advanced planning system that could handle our complex work environment while also being extremely flexible,” said Peter Green, General Manager at PKCT. “Quintiq has a proven track record in the industry and is recognized as highly successful in the field. With Quintiq, we could get exactly what we needed: a solid solution with flexibility.”

Paul Shepherd, Director of Business Unit Australia and New Zealand at Quintiq, added: “PKCT’s choice of Quintiq has brought us one step closer to achieving our strategic objective of becoming the leader in bulk terminal planning and scheduling. We view this as an important market globally and have built an industry solution tailored to the unique planning requirements of these organizations. We are pleased that PKCT will reap the benefits of this unique solution.”

About PKCT

Port Kembla Coal Terminal is a coal exporting facility on Australia’s east coast, 72 km south of Sydney. It services two of the nation’s richest coal reserves, the Southern and Western coalfields of New South Wales, exporting high quality coking and steaming coal to customers around the world. PKCT is a valued link in the global coal supply chain. For more information: www.pkct.com.au

About Quintiq

Quintiq provides advanced planning, scheduling and supply chain management solutions. The fast-growing company established in 1997, offers software for planning and optimizing complex business processes throughout the enterprise. The company’s headquarters is located in the Netherlands and it has subsidiaries in Australia, China, Finland, Germany, Malaysia, the UK and the United States. For more information: www.quintiq.com.

Source: Quintiq

For more information, please contact: Quintiq Pty Ltd, Robin Sands, Marketing Manager, +61-3-9268-6900, robin.sands at quintiq.com; Quintiq Headquarters, Martijn van Gils, Global Marketing Director, +31(0)73-691-07-39, martijn.van.gils at quintiq.com