Secure Assets

Chilean Coca-Cola bottling location upgrades to IP video to secure assets, improve operations

• By Courtney Pedersen
• Sep 01, 2017

Coca-Cola Andina is among the three largest Coca- Cola bottlers in Latin America, servicing franchised territories with almost 52 million people. In 2014, Coca- Cola Andina delivered more than 4.7 billion liters of soft drinks, juices and bottled waters to market. The multinational company employs about 20,000 people in the four countries, including Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina and Chile.

The Coca-Cola Andina facility in Chile, features four production plants with 18 buildings, and approximately 5,000 employees. The video security system upgrade project began five years ago and the installation involved 16 of the facility’s 18 buildings. The building sizes are diverse, ranging from 20 to 67 acres.

Given these big dimensions, the company undertook a project to completely upgrade its analog security system. Today, Coca-Cola Andina has a modern IP network-based video security system that helps the company secure staff and assets, and reduce operational losses.

Andina chose a Milestone system that allows video to be recorded and viewed by authorized users from anywhere on the network, and brings centralized control of multiple sites. This capability helps the company reduce the need for duplicate staff or equipment in each location, with potential savings of thousands of dollars in salaries and equipment costs. Maintenance and service costs are also reduced because IP-based systems can be adjusted, reviewed or even reconfigured without reinstalling or pulling new cabling.

“Coca-Cola Andina had a basic analog system that did not allow them to control real-time asset security procedures or perform forensic analysis on images to determine the cause of errors,” said Romina Zamora, commercial manager, CTIS-GROUP, the integration firm for the project.

Zamora said that Coca-Cola Andina had already purchased the cameras and hardware, and for that reason it was necessary to have an open platform architecture for the video management software to be compatible.

For these reasons, Coca-Cola Andina chose the Milestone XProtect Corporate video management software (VMS) to manage the varied cameras and security devices, including Axis, Sony and Dahua cameras, and the integration with an OPTEX access control system.

“Since we started working with the Milestone system, we have lowered our intrusion rates, which is of the utmost importance because there are banking entities within our facility,” said Guillermo Ampuero, deputy manager of security and general services, Coca- Cola Andina Chile. “Currently in Chile, there are increasing thefts at automatic teller machines and with vehicles in the parking lots. This requires us to implement more measures within the platform to be able to detect these types of cases in real time.”

The facility’s centralized control room is operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with two operators per shift focused on controlling security procedures by executing automated responses, such as zooming in on an object that is generating an alarm, or displaying video events that present risks. The system is mainly responsible for perimeter security and control of logistics procedures to reduce internal losses.

“The result has been very positive. Last year, maps and geo-referencing were incorporated, which allow us to show that our choice of platform grants an excellent return on investment,” Zamora said.

This article originally appeared in the September 2017 issue of Security Today.