Danish brewing group Carlsberg has adopted IoT to gain real-time insights into draught beer sales and early warning of technical issues. The adoption has been spurred by the phasing out of 2G and 3G across Europe, which will affect many of the systems currently used in pubs and bars across the continent.

The Carlsberg Group plans to deploy its new Digital DraughtMaster in ten countries starting in 2024. The company will employ IoT connectivity specialist Onomondo’s network, which will allow it to connect to over 630 separate networks in more than 180 countries via Onomondo’s Network Marketplace.

To securely transmit data from the Digital DraughtMaster to their AWS Cloud environment, Carlsberg will also use Onomondo Connectors. These connectors provide enhanced data security, eliminating the need for intermediate servers and ensuring protection against interception, and have also helped Carlsberg achieve a 30% reduction in transmitted data, reducing costs over the device’s lifetime. Onomondo’s software enables Carlsberg to troubleshoot remotely, reducing downtime.

The predictive maintenance capabilities of the Digital DraughtMaster, coupled with Onomondo’s software, allow users to address potential problems before they impact beer flow. 

Henrik Aagaard, co-founder and CTO of Onomondo, commented: “Onomondo’s objective has always been to serve a global client base and provide a simplified and unified network that provides IoT solutions with optimal coverage. By collaborating with Carlsberg, we have built a solution that can function wherever their beer is consumed. This is particularly important given the phasing out of 2G and 3G standards worldwide, making it crucial for the network and devices to demonstrate adaptability and remain future-proof.” 

Gregory Thomas, Senior Director at Carlsberg overseeing DraughtMaster, commented on the collaboration, “Before working with Onomondo, we identified three key challenges that needed addressing for a successful rollout of our DraughtMaster system: operating devices on a global scale, ensuring secure transmission of data to cloud environments, and guaranteeing constant connectivity and functionality. This is a challenge that usually requires a patchwork of service providers, but by implementing Onomondo’s IoT SIMs and core network into our system, these headaches are removed in one fell swoop. Onomondo is a simple, reliable, and accessible way to overcome the connectivity silos that have often plagued IoT projects.”