Flinders Ports Adelaide Container Terminal installs RFID vehicle tracking system from RAMP RFID
One of the many time-consuming and labour-intensive tasks carried out by marine container terminal operators is the management of truck movements in and out of terminals. For Adelaide Container Terminal, one of the world’s largest marine container terminal companies, significant improvements in vehicle tracking efficiency and productivity have been achieved through the implementation of a vehicle tracking system based on RFID technology from Ramp RFID.
The Adelaide Container Terminal installation follows the successful deployment of Ramp RFID’s radio frequency identification technology at Flinders Ports‘ Port Botany, Fremantle and Brisbane terminals.
With more than 60 marine terminals in operation across six continents, Adelaide Container Terminal aims to enhance customers’ supply chain efficiency by effectively managing container, bulk and other cargo. The terminal is focused on providing customised solutions to meet customer needs by consistently achieving high container productivity rates, rapid container delivery and timely information. Currently Adelaide is the only container terminal operator servicing South Australia.
With more than 100 transport industry customers, Adelaide Container Terminal has approximately 500 container-loaded trucks moving through the terminal’s access gates each day.
Previously, truck movements and container drop-offs and pick-ups were managed via a manual system that required truck drivers to exchange paperwork with a clerk upon arrival at the facility. The clerk would then manually enter the job into the terminal’s operating system to organise the appropriate machinery to unload the truck’s containers and arrange container pick-up.
Although recognised as an inefficient system susceptible to inaccuracies, a viable alternative was not available until the advent of RFID technology.
With the transition to RFID technology, DP World Adelaide has gone from one hundred percent manual transactions to less than one percent manual transactions.
Jai Alexander Yard and Transport Superintendent, Flinders Ports Adelaide Container Terminal

For the rollout of its RFID-based vehicle tracking system, Adelaide Container Terminal provided over 1,000 active RFID tags to the truck owner/operators that use the terminal. With an RFID tag attached to the rear bumper of each truck and read zones installed at all truck entry and exit points, the terminal is able to automatically process trucks resulting in reduced truck queuing time, reduced congestion around gates and an overall increase in productivity and accuracy.
The RFID tags supplied by Ramp RFID were Identec Solutions’ Intelligent Long Range beacon tags.The terminal’s capture points use Identec’s iPort Reader and iMark position markers with IQ Beacon middleware to capture and output the data to the terminal’s operating system. Position marker technology with in-road ground loop antennas were installed at each truck lane to provide discrete lane visibility, allowing Adelaide Container Terminal to know which particular lane a truck is occupying.
