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Keg tracking and pooling provider Konvoy has announced it has signed its first European customers as it closes its latest $13 million capital raise.

Making the announcement as it attended last week’s Beer Asia conference in Saigon to generate interest in its keg tracking solutions in Asia, Managing Director Adam Trippe-Smith said the funds would be used to fuel the global expansion.

He said the signing of a ‘significant’ Irish brewery was the first of a number of agreements to provide the company’s Katch cellular tracking device and Konvoy Cloud tracking platform, with more being negotiated in the Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom, France, USA, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Spain and Iceland.

“This customer acceleration demonstrates the benefits of the Katch cellular tracking device which, coupled with our cloud platform, reduces keg and cask losses, improves asset turns and creates real-time visibility of the key conditions affecting beer quality through the supply chain,” he said.

“There is increasing interest from both small and large European brewers who want to utilise our technology to reduce capital expenditure, unlock under-deployed kegs, understand on-premise data and reduce labour costs through eliminating manually intensive barcode scanning and outdated tracking measures.”

He said that post-COVID keg-owning breweries have increasingly seen the value in keg tracking and pooling.

“COVID was the first time in history that every keg in the world stopped moving,” he said.

“Everyone had just been letting their kegs roll around and it just sort of worked.

“Yes, they’d have to top up their keg numbers every year but COVID really hit home that actually no one knew where their kegs were.”

He said that European interest was also driven by the fact its cloud platform can help beverage producers measure their Scope 3 footprint, which is carbon emissions created by suppliers and customers up and down the supply chain.

Larger Australian companies will soon also be required to report on scope 3 emissions starting next year with companies with $500 million in revenue or 500 employees, phased in over three years with companies with $25 million in assets, $50 million in revenue or 100 employees included by 2027-2028.

Trippe-Smith said that Brew Asia has been one of the most engaged trade shows Konvoy had attended.

“It has had more activity than any trade show we’ve been to, so interest is high,” he said.

“The beauty for us is that we’re not geographically based.

“We have got operations or trials in more than 10 countries around the world and that increasingly works for Asian brewers.”

The capital raise comes after the company announced in February that it was seeking to raise $25 million. Having raised the initial $13 million, the company will now seek to raise the balance in UK markets where it has an office.

In 2021 the company raised $30 million.