Neutral Fuels has created a bespoke mobile app to enable tighter control of the collection and delivery of used cooking oil for its flagship UAE customer, McDonald’s.
Thousands of litres of used oil are collected from McDonald’s Dubai restaurants every day and delivered to the Neutral Fuels refinery. Here, the waste oil is processed into Net Zero biofuel for McDonald’s UAE and other customers, creating a self-sufficient closed loop for the city-scale Neutral Fuels operation.
Since 2011, the McDonald’s UAE logistics vehicle fleet has driven exclusively on 100% Net Zero biofuel made from its own waste oil processed by Neutral Fuels. In 2019 alone, the company reduced its carbon emissions by 2,405,862 kilograms.
“A paperless collection and delivery process improves the company’s logistics operation,” said Walid Fakih, General Manager of McDonald’s UAE. ‘The app increases the productivity of the drivers and reduces the chance of errors. From a management point of view, it gives us an even tighter control of all information in the process and enables us to quickly track quantities and provenance.”
The new mobile app was developed by another company within The Neutral Group, Neutral Software based in New Zealand.
Karl Feilder, CEO of The Neutral Group, said: “Neutral Software is also currently developing a new client portal as part of a larger group project to bring all of its Internet of Things data in-house and reduce dependence on third party services and solutions. The new client portal is a web-based dashboard that allows suppliers to view the results of chemical analysis of the oil collected from their restaurants as well as the corresponding delivery information, and then cross reference to any alerts generated by discrepancies and record how they were remedied. It also tracks each of the reusable oil containers (ROCs) that we developed and tailor-made with a McDonald’s logistics supplier to improve oil collection and transportation.”
Neutral Fuels supplies locked-down GPS aware tablets to McDonald’s drivers each morning together with that day’s collection information, correlated to the truck being driven. Drivers collect full ROCs from many different stores during the course of a day, and supply empty replacement ROCs for each one.
All along the supply chain, delivery and collection records are agreed and approved between driver, restaurant manager and the Neutral Fuels refinery, enabling admin staff at Neutral Fuels HQ to manage deliveries on a ROC by ROC basis or in bulk. Alerts are raised if the quantity of oil received is different from the quantity collected, and if all ROCs are not present.
Once a delivery is complete, a detailed receipt is emailed to McDonald’s UAE enabling an overview of the entire process and flagging up alerts before they become problems. It includes the condition of each ROC which enables both companies to ensure ongoing quality.
“The good thing about developing the app in-house is that we can add other elements McDonald’s UAE may want recorded in the future,” said Feilder. “We’ve developed a slightly different version of the app for use by municipalities, and will continue to use technology to give our clients an edge that enables them to improve fuel consumption and logistics.”
The Neutral Fuels mobile app is available for IOS and Android platforms.
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