St1 to unify fuel supply chain with Relex
Energy company St1 has chosen Relex Solutions to unify demand, inventory and distribution planning across its fuel supply chain.
Relex partner NTT Data will support the joint-project team.
St1 operates in Finland, Sweden, Norway and the U.K.
Its energy portfolio encompasses oil products, biogas, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), renewable diesel (HVO) and solar power.
St1 also advances several energy-transition projects.
Additionally, the company operates a network of approximately 1,150 retail stations.
As fuel demand has become increasingly volatile, St1 is strengthening its demand forecasting and supply-chain planning capabilities with Relex.
The aim is to build on the expertise of St1’s planning teams and bring product and logistics decisions into a single, integrated view.
This is expected to increase supply-chain visibility, speed up and better coordinate decision-making, improve fleet utilization and give St1 greater flexibility in responding to market changes.
Relex will bring demand planning and sensing, inventory planning, distribution planning, and vessel and berth scheduling into one shared platform.
Demand forecasts will inform terminal-inventory projections and replenishment needs, which will feed into vessel-voyage and jetty-loading schedules and, ultimately, refinery production and supply requirements.
This will create one connected planning signal from terminal demand back to refinery production, replacing several disconnected spreadsheet-based processes.
St1 chose Relex for its ability to connect demand, inventory, distribution and scheduling decisions within one platform, rather than relying on multiple providers or investing in a custom in-house system.
The configurable platform will also allow St1 to extend Relex to additional use cases as its needs develop.
“Managing our fuel supply network in the best possible way requires us to balance demand, inventory, vessel movements and refinery requirements every day,” said Olli Lahdenperä, St1’s value-chain lead for HVO and SAF. “Bringing these decisions together will give our teams better visibility across the network and increase our ability to make better decisions without awaiting manual processes to be finished.”
Sami Salminen, the director of supply-chain consulting at NTT Data, added, “Fuel logistics comes with specific physical and operational constraints that need to be reflected in how the system is designed and implemented. Our role is to bring energy and fuel-logistics expertise to the project and work closely with St1 and Relex to translate the requirements of St1’s fuel network into an effective planning process.”
Stefano Scandelli, the general manager of manufacturing at Relex Solutions, said, “St1 demonstrates how Relex can support complex supply networks beyond traditional retail and manufacturing. Fuel distribution brings very different physical constraints, from terminal inventory and vessel capacity to refinery requirements. Bringing those variables together gives St1 a clearer view across the network, helping its planners make faster decisions while improving the use of inventory and logistics capacity.”
