Nectar was established in 1972 and in the early 1980s revolutionized the bulk handling industry at developing ports around the world when it invented and launched the world’s first mobile bagging system.

More recently Nectar has developed its strategy towards the management, operation and maintenance of terminals starting in 2011 with the Beira Coal Terminal in Mozambique. In operating the coal terminal, Nectar is responsible for all of the activities within the terminal from unloading of coal from the trains up to loading of the vessels including maintenance of all terminal equipment. The terminal has a design throughput capacity of five million tonnes per year and has a vessel loading capacity of 2,400 metric tonnes per hour.

Nectar chose DBIS to provide their terminal management system for Beira and the organizations have worked closely together on various initiatives until 2015 when Nectar was awarded two major projects; firstly a ten-year concession to operate the Freetown Terminal in Sierra Leone and then a joint venture between Seasia Logistics Philippines Inc. and Nectar to construct a US$18.5 million terminal in Bataan, Philippines.

Nectar will operate each terminal with a local management team but at the same time allow the central management to interact with the terminals to monitor the performance of the operations from both a process and a financial perspective. For this to work effectively Nectar needed consistency in the local operational practices and the capability to access real time information remotely. To facilitate this Nectar has followed up the decision at the Beira terminal and implemented the CommTrac terminal management system from DBIS.

In 2015 DBIS released CommTrac V4, a totally new release of the CommTrac software created using a web user interface, which is perfectly suited to the requirements for remote access required by Nectar. CommTrac V4 has also been created to meet the needs of breakbulk and general cargo terminals as well as DBIS’ traditional customers in the bulk sector. 

This additional functionality provides Nectar with the perfect platform to develop their terminal business in whichever direction the market requires.

To keep human resources to a minimum Nectar will use a single system administrator based in the UK to manage master data and commercial terms within the systems, training of local teams will also be performed by Nectar’s own super users.

To deliver the software to the terminals in a quick and simple way the decision was made to construct containerized offices, which use modified shipping containers as administrative offices and server rooms, interconnected using Wi-Fi. This allowed the systems to be connected to weighbridges and fully tested in the UK prior to shipping by standard container liner service to the destination country where they could be set down, powered up and put into operation, quickly and easily.

DBIS and Nectar have put in place a multi-site agreement with the plan to implement the DBIS solution wherever Nectar establishes a terminal operation, to ensure consistent and remotely accessible information is provided to the key decision makers in the organization.