Comvex, the country’s largest grain port terminal chooses Bento to implement the Grânar solution

ABOUT COMVEX

Comvex is the largest terminal specializing in the operation of bulk solid raw materials in the Black Sea area, covering an area of 700,386 sq.m. in the south of the Port of Constanta, Romania. Comvex terminal is a market leader, specializing in the handling, storage and transshipment of bulk solid raw materials such as: grain, iron ore, coal, coke, bauxite, with complete and modern operating facilities located in the Port of Constanta.

THE CHALLENGE

In 2019, Comvex built the largest grain terminal in the Port of Constanta, in Dana 80, which is why the implementation of a state-of-the-art customized customer management application, integrated with high-tech automation systems specific to the automation of silo processes, was a priority for the company.
Following recommendations from the market, BENTO was chosen as the future supplier of the aforementioned applications.
The first phase of the project started with an audit that consisted of analyzing the existing business and workflows in the Comvex grain silo. This was preceded by the creation of the specification document that formed the basis of all development customizations on the existing version of the Bento Grain product.

SOLUTION

A full software development team was involved in the project, consisting of a project manager, business analysts, software developers and testers who customized Bento Grânar according to the specifications submitted by Comvex and those identified by the Bento team during the audit.

After completing the development of the custom functionalities agreed in the first phase of the project, the development and implementation of all interfaces with Comvex equipment followed: barriers, displays, RFID card readers, LPR camera, flow scales, laboratory equipment.

Thus, after thorough testing, in March 2020, the customized version of the Grânar application was put into production, facilitating from the first days the increase of the terminal’s reception capacity by more than 500 grain trucks per day.

Over time, new functionalities have been added to the application such as grain reception via barges and grain delivery via ships and automatic flow for grain train reception.

In order to automate the whole reception and delivery process, customizations of the Bento Grain application specific to a port terminal have been made, as well as interfacing with multiple systems within Comvex such as:

barrier and display system, as well as RFID card access and LPR cameras for truck flow;
laboratory equipment, automatically taking all the values for analysis of all the goods entering the silo, which can be used to determine the product’s moisture content, the presence of a foreign body and whether the grain is infested, thus minimising the time it takes to process this data;
flow scales for both trucks and trains.

BENEFITS

The solution implemented in the Comvex grain silo was designed to simplify and automate all the operations of reception, storage and management of grain stocks, as well as to generate all the legal documents related to the management of grain stocks – BCA, scale ticket, SRC, AJG, stock statements by lots, stock statements by grade, etc.

Through Bento Grain, Comvex’s inbound capacity has increased by more than 500 grain trucks per day.

“The project implemented within Comvex was put into production two years ago, since then the company has managed to increase its reception capacity and reduce its costs for managing the operations of reception, storage and management of grain stocks by 20%. We thank Comvex for the trust they have placed in our team and the productive collaboration we have every day.” – Vlad Bodea, co-founder Bento.

“The COMVEX Grain Terminal, the most modern terminal in the Black Sea area, needed a state-of-the-art custom application for customer management, an application integrated with high-tech automation systems. The Bento – Comvex collaboration started in 2019 and resulted in a customized Bento Grânar application, which significantly improved the overall functionality of the COMVEX Grain Terminal, thus providing new benefits for COMVEX. We thank Bento for a beneficial and reliable product.” – Viorel Panait, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Comvex.