Real Pet Food Streamlines Freight from Farm to Bowl with Cario
Client: Real Pet FoodReal Pet Food (RPF) is Australia’s largest fresh pet food manufacturer, supplying to retailers like Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, IGA, and Petbarn, along with distributors including Amazon. |
Industry: Pet Food Manufacturing |
Integrated freight system
rolled out across 3 major DCs
Centralised platform
instead of manual Spreadsheets
Cost-to-serve reporting
now accessible week-on-week
Seamless integration
with QAD ERP and future WMS plans
The Problem
With three major distribution centres operating independently across NSW and QLD, Real Pet Food’s (RPF) freight network was both high-volume and complex, shipping everything from chilled and frozen pallets, to small B2C parcels.
Despite this scale, RPF managed freight manually. Spreadsheets were the main tool for load planning and reconciling freight costs. Each site handled its own freight processes, leading to duplicated admin across operations, accounts payable, customer service, and sales. The team had limited visibility of shipments or carriers, making it hard to track deliveries or access proof of delivery (PODs).
The reporting process was just as fragmented. Without a unified freight overview, the business couldn’t accurately measure costs, delivery performance, or spot opportunities for improvement.
As Jason Stalin, RPF’s International Logistics Manager, explained: “You’re dealing with multiple parts of the business across finance, sales, and senior management. We needed to understand our cost-to-serve across all customers and sites. That was impossible to do with spreadsheets.”
The Impact
The lack of systemisation slowed the business down. Freight data was inconsistent, with large customers like Coles sometimes recorded in four different ways. Cost reconciliation was labour-intensive, and delivery visibility was mostly reactive.
For the finance team, there was no reliable way to analyse freight spend or link costs to specific SKUs or customers. For the operations and customer service teams, tracking shipments involved contacting carriers and manually checking spreadsheets.
As Jason explained: “There was an enormous amount of double-handling. We couldn’t confidently say what our spend was week-on-week, or which customers were costing us more to serve.”
The Solution
RPF chose Cario without considering other providers. The decision was driven by Cario’s flexibility, industry experience, and proven ability to integrate with existing systems like QAD (ERP) and Infor (WMS). Importantly, Cario had already onboarded many of the refrigerated and frozen carriers that RPF relied on, thanks to previous work with another customer in the same sector.
For Jason and his team, it was about more than just moving off spreadsheets. “Cario gave us a centralised platform with the flexibility to manage complex, temperature-controlled freight. Our ERP and WMS couldn’t fill that gap, but Cario could. And they didn’t ask us to change our data upstream, it worked with us as we were.”
With Cario in place, all three DCs now manage freight from the same system. Orders flow from QAD into Cario, where the dispatch team selects what to consign each day. Visibility and reporting are integrated, not bolted on. The team can now track deliveries, review performance, and calculate cost-to-serve by customer, all in one central system.
The Results
The change has been transformational.
Where there was once a jumble of spreadsheets and site-specific processes, RPF now has a single source of truth for freight.
Jason says the biggest win is confidence: “We can now hand on heart say, this is our spend, week-on-week. We also know which customers are costing us more to serve and that’s gold from a P&L perspective”.
Centralised reporting allows the finance team to generate accurate cost data for products and customers, while operations and customer service have real-time access to delivery status and PODs. Even carrier onboarding was simplified with Coles Collect and Woolworths Primary Connect being added to Cario, benefiting RPF immediately and expanding Cario’s broader supermarket delivery capability.
Although the rollout is still in its early stages, the team is already noticing improvements in freight visibility, reporting, and internal coordination. Staff across the business, from finance to operations, are spending less time on administrative tasks and more on optimising outcomes.
What’s next
RPF plans to strengthen its integration with Infor WMS and further automate cost reconciliation. Carbon reporting is also planned, supporting the company’s sustainability mission to reduce emissions and waste across the supply chain.
As Jason reflects, “Cario’s not just filling a gap, it’s helping us build a smarter, more connected freight operation. And we’re just getting started”.