Fonterra’s long-time partnership with its battery provider HCB Technologies, hasn’t just delivered efficiencies and bottom-line savings, it’s also helping the environment.

Operating one of the hardest working truck fleets in the world, dairy co-operative Fonterra has a relentless drive to improving efficiencies.

Its 500-plus truck and trailer tanker units collect milk from almost 9500 farms all over New Zealand on a daily basis. The trucks are operational 24/7 and, at peak times, make a total of about 3000 journeys a day, clocking up around 96-million kilometres on the road annually.

With many of the trucks traveling around 250,000km a year, much of the distance on rough, unsealed rural roads, reliability and safety are key tenets when it comes to maintaining the fleet.

Guy Cooper, Fonterra’s national parts and warranty manager, says the co-operative is also committed to running the most cost-effective and efficient fleet in the country. At the same time, Fonterra is also working hard to reduce its carbon footprint.

Choosing the right battery
With a large fleet, the choice of truck battery can make a significant difference to the performance, cost, and environmental impact of Fonterra’s transport operation, so it is a decision the co-operative has put significant effort into getting right.

Like other fleet operators around the world, Fonterra has found the demands on batteries in its trucks have increased significantly as the amount of onboard electronic equipment continues to grow. Its tankers are equipped with sophisticated electronic systems, which control everything from driver and engine management, the pickup schedule and mapping, through to onboard sampling and measuring of the milk collected at each site.

The batteries also need to be particularly robust. Guy says because the trucks spend a large portion of their time on unsealed roads, and are empty about 55% of the time – meaning there is no weight onboard to steady up the suspension – the vehicles are susceptible to a lot of movement. This impacts the batteries because sharp shocks in the trucks under these conditions have been measured at up to 9G in the battery box.

Then there are environmental considerations. Fonterra’s end-of-life batteries are collected for recycling, but the co-op believes it is important they last as long as possible to minimise the number of units that are replaced each year.

Fonterra’s relationship with HCB
Fonterra has been helped in achieving its reliability, efficiency and waste minimisation goals thanks to a strong and enduring relationship with its battery supplier, HCB Technologies Ltd, and a history of success with their chosen brand, VARTA.

HCB has been New Zealand’s battery specialist for more than 30 years, offering the widest range and the biggest depth of product, and the most knowledgeable people in the industry. It is part of the Bapcor group of companies, and Bapcor is the sole distributor for VARTA batteries in Australasia.

The VARTA brand has a strong global reputation for its heavy commercial vehicle batteries and Fonterra, through its relationship with HCB, has used VARTA products since 2011.

Prior to 2010, Fonterra’s truck batteries typically only lasted three to six months. Over the past decade, VARTA owner Clarios has worked closely with the co-op and HCB on a series of trials that have seen average battery life across the fleet increase significantly.

In 2019 Fonterra became the first customer in Australasia – and one of the first in the world – to trial VARTA’s new top-of-the-line heavy commercial vehicle battery, the ProMotive AGM (A1).

The ProMotive AGM is designed to optimally support drivers and their trucks during their time on the road. Since the demand for nonstop transportation services require trucks to be on the road every day, drivers spend more time in the cabin than ever before, increasing the demand on their vehicles’ batteries.

The ProMotive AGM meets this challenge, offering excellent charge acceptance, extended cycle life and increased depth of discharge. It also has exceptionally high vibration resistance, making it suitable for end-of-frame battery installations and tough enough for New Zealand roads where the problem of reduced battery life due to vibration has plagued truck and fleet owners. At the same time, the ProMotive AGM complies with Euro-5/6 environmental standards.

Battery pair lasts 800,000km
The ProMotive AGM was initially trialled in three of Fonterra’s tankers. One of the three battery pairs was removed and torn down after six months. It was found to be performing on par with a brand-new battery, with no degradation.

A second pair was pulled out and torn down in August 2020 after the truck had travelled 280,000km. While it was showing some signs of wear and tear, the degradation was less than expected after that amount of time on the road, and the batteries were still operating at 95% of their initial capacity.

The third pair was removed in February 2022, 31 months after being installed in a truck that had travelled about 800,000km during that time.

Following those impressive early trial results, Fonterra now has ProMotive AGMs installed in almost its entire fleet of mainly Volvo trucks.

“The success of our relationship with HCB is demonstrated by the fact we’ve moved from consuming more than 1400 batteries in a season for a smaller fleet to only 507 – it’s a huge change over the time,” Guy says.

“We’ve gone from replacing batteries in a truck up to three times a year to now only needing to do it every second or third year. That’s amazing progress.”

He says Fonterra reached the stage where they are so happy with the VARTA ProMotive AGM that they influenced Volvo out of Australia to fit the AGM on new trucks they ordered.

“So, with the assistance of Clarios and our other partners, the trucks being delivered to us this year will have the AGM battery fitted by the Volvo Wacol plant in Brisbane, which is good news for us.”

Guy says Fonterra will continue working with its partners to further reduce the number of batteries the co-op uses as it strives for even better efficiencies and a smaller carbon footprint.

“We’re keen to work alongside HCB, Clarios and VARTA to utilise whatever battery technology is going to come along in the motor space, because even when we move to alternative fuels, there’s still going to be a need for that type of battery in all vehicles.”

About Fonterra
• A global brand, processing about 83% of New Zealand’s milk.
• Generates about $11 billion into the New Zealand economy through the milk price.
• At peak production, collect about 85 million litres of milk per day, or 16 billion litres a year.
• 30 manufacturing sites across New Zealand.
• Run a fleet of more than 500 truck and trailer units, operating 24/7.