Mumbai: Honeywell Automation India Ltd (HAIL) in partnership with Orpak of Israel, has been awarded a $48-million order to provide comprehensive e-retail solutions for Indian Oil Corporation Ltd and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation. As part of this order, HAIL will offer automation solutions to approximately 1,300 retail outlets, 2,300 product tankers and over a 100 product storage terminals.

Honeywell India (formerly Tata Honeywell Ltd) , an affliat of the &26-billion US Honeywell, Inc, is a leading supplier of industrial automation and control
solutions to core industries including petrochemicals, refinery, oil and
gas, mining, metals, life sciences and power generation

This order, is one of Honeywell's biggest in Asia Pacific. Harshavardhan Chitale, managing director, HAIL, calls it a "landmark breakthrough in our business, not only for HAIL but also for heralding a new chapter in fuel marketing in India".

The solutions offered by Honeywell include dispenser access systems, outdoor payment terminals with receipt printers, credit/debit and loyalty card readers, POS terminals; on-line transaction processing from pump islands with the bank switch, product level and density measurement instruments, all of which contribute to better and efficient management and reporting system.

For petroleum tankers, HAIL is offering an electronic locking and global audit system for tracking the tankers to eliminate pilferages enroute. The benefits of these solutions include:

To consumers:

• Assurance of quality and quantity of the product (fuel) being dispensed.
  
• Facility to use a variety of payment methods (cash, debit/credit card, loyalty card) at the pump.
  
• Enables oil companies to offer cashless transactions and self-service operation to the vehicle owners.
  
• An extension of the automation system would also control the operations of convenience stores located at the retail outlet, car wash or any other value-add service that may be provided by the retail outlet dealer.

To oil companies:

• Better retention / increase its market share through greater customer loyalty
• Ability to offer various loyalty programmes to fleet owners
• Improvement in retail station operational efficiency and asset utilisation
• Ability to study demand of various products and loads at various outlets to take tactical and strategic marketing decisions regarding petroleum retailing.
• Greater visibility of the outlet's operations
• Access to online data which will help monitor / prevent fraudulent
  practices.

IOC is ranked 170 in the Global Fortune 500 listing, with revenues in excess of $34 billion, and the 18th largest petroleum company in the world. HPCL, is the second largest oil company in India, with revenues in excess of $13 billion, with over 5,500 retail outlets.