Vertical: Food Processing
Application: Voice communication, video dispatching, GIS-based visual management, unified dispatch platform, personnel and device location monitoring, team coordination, emergency response communication
Ecosystem: Inrico Technologies, China Unicom, Yihai Kerry
Private Network: 5G, Legacy 4G/LTE Integration
| Major agribusiness operator upgrades to 5G for converged campus communications. Yihai Kerry’s Lianyungang facility transitions from legacy 4G infrastructure to integrated private 5G, enabling unified voice, video, and location services across production, logistics, and safety operations. |
Yihai Kerry, one of China’s largest agribusiness and food processing conglomerates, has upgraded its industrial campus communications infrastructure in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, from a legacy 4G private network to an integrated 5G solution. The deployment, executed by Inrico Technologies in partnership with China Unicom, represents a significant step in bringing carrier-grade converged communications to the food manufacturing sector.
The upgrade enables the integration of legacy two-way radios and new 5G-enabled devices on a single unified platform, addressing the challenge faced by many industrial operators of maintaining interoperability between older equipment investments and next-generation technology. The deployment supports real-time voice communication, video dispatching, GIS-based visual management, and a centralized dispatch platform that monitors personnel and device locations across the campus.
| Metric | Detail |
| Network type | Private 5G (integrated with legacy 4G/LTE) |
| Key vendor(s) | Inrico Technologies |
| Operator / integrator | China Unicom |
| Devices | S350 5G smart devices, two-way radios |
| Location | Yihai Kerry industrial campus, Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, China |
Yihai Kerry’s Industrial Footprint and Operational Context
Yihai Kerry is a subsidiary of Singapore-based Wilmar International and operates as one of China’s most extensive agribusiness platforms. The company’s operations span edible oils, rice milling, flour processing, and a broad portfolio of food products distributed across domestic and international markets. Its industrial campuses are typically large-scale facilities where production, logistics, quality control, maintenance, and safety teams must coordinate continuously across multiple buildings, storage facilities, and transportation zones.
The Lianyungang facility is located in a key coastal city in Jiangsu Province, a region known for its concentration of food processing and chemical manufacturing. Industrial campuses of this scale face persistent communication challenges, particularly the need to coordinate teams in real time during production cycles, respond to equipment failures, manage logistics flows, and ensure rapid response to safety incidents. Traditional two-way radio systems, while reliable, lack the data integration, video capability, and location tracking that modern industrial operations increasingly require. Similar upgrades in manufacturing environments have demonstrated the value of converged communication platforms that unify voice, video, and data on a single network infrastructure.
The Challenge: Bridging Legacy and Next-Generation Infrastructure
Yihai Kerry’s existing 4G private network supported basic voice communication and push-to-talk functionality across the campus. However, the system lacked the bandwidth and low latency needed for real-time video dispatching and high-resolution location services. Additionally, the company faced a common industrial dilemma: a significant installed base of legacy two-way radios still in service, representing both a capital investment and a pool of trained users. Replacing these devices outright would have been costly and disruptive.
The operational requirement was to enhance communication capabilities, particularly for urgent incidents where visual confirmation and precise location data can reduce response times and improve decision-making, while preserving interoperability with existing equipment. The food processing environment also demanded a secure, resilient network capable of operating independently of public mobile networks, ensuring that critical communications remain available during peak production periods or external network disruptions. Industrial deployments in sectors such as utilities and ports have similarly prioritized network resilience and device interoperability when transitioning to private cellular infrastructure.
Deployment Architecture: Converged 4G and 5G Integration
Inrico’s solution centers on a converged communication platform that integrates both the legacy 4G private network and the newly deployed 5G infrastructure. This hybrid architecture allows legacy two-way radios to continue operating on the 4G network while new S350 5G smart devices access enhanced services over the 5G layer. The platform provides a unified dispatch interface where control room operators can communicate with, track, and coordinate teams regardless of the device type or network segment they are using.
China Unicom, one of the country’s three major telecommunications operators, provided the 5G private network infrastructure and spectrum resources. The deployment likely leverages China Unicom’s approach to hybrid private networks, in which enterprise-dedicated spectrum or sliced resources are combined with carrier-grade core network functions. This model has become common in China’s industrial 5G rollouts, offering enterprises the security and control of a private network with the performance and reliability of carrier infrastructure. The architecture supports low-latency services essential for real-time video and location-based applications, which are critical for coordinating teams across the sprawling campus environment. Comparable rail transport deployments have demonstrated the effectiveness of carrier partnerships in delivering private 5G with enterprise-grade service levels.
Operational Capabilities and Use Cases
The upgraded network supports a range of operational use cases tailored to the food processing environment. Voice communication remains the foundation, enabling instant push-to-talk conversations among production, logistics, maintenance, and safety personnel. The addition of video dispatching allows supervisors and control room operators to request live video feeds from field personnel during equipment inspections, quality checks, or emergency situations, providing visual context that accelerates troubleshooting and decision-making.
The GIS-based visual management system overlays personnel and device locations onto digital maps of the campus, enabling dispatchers to identify the nearest available responder to an incident, track team movements during complex operations, and ensure accountability in restricted or hazardous areas. This capability is particularly valuable in large facilities where visibility and situational awareness are limited. During urgent incidents, such as equipment malfunctions, spills, or safety alarms, the unified dispatch platform enables rapid coordination across network segments, ensuring that all relevant teams, regardless of whether they are using legacy radios or new 5G devices, receive consistent information and instructions. Industries ranging from aviation to agriculture have adopted similar converged communication platforms to improve coordination and response times in distributed operational environments.
Device Integration: S350 5G Smart Devices and Legacy Equipment
Inrico’s S350 5G smart devices serve as the primary endpoint for the enhanced communication services. These devices combine the ruggedness and simplicity of traditional two-way radios with the data capabilities of modern smartphones, featuring large touchscreens, high-resolution cameras for video communication, GPS receivers for precise location tracking, and support for both voice and broadband data applications. The S350 devices are designed for industrial use, with durability ratings suitable for the food processing environment, where exposure to moisture, temperature fluctuations, and physical impacts is common.
The continued support for legacy two-way radios is a key feature of the deployment, reflecting the practical realities of industrial communication systems where equipment lifecycles are long and user familiarity is an important operational consideration. The converged platform bridges the two device types, ensuring that voice communications remain interoperable and that dispatch services can reach all personnel regardless of the device generation they are using. This incremental approach to technology adoption reduces upfront costs, minimizes training requirements, and allows the organization to phase in new devices as budgets permit or as specific use cases justify the investment. Similar strategies have been employed in defense and commercial real estate deployments, where backward compatibility and device interoperability are critical for mission continuity.
Industry Context: Private 5G in China’s Food Manufacturing Sector
The Yihai Kerry deployment reflects broader trends in China’s industrial digitalization, where private cellular networks are being adopted across manufacturing, logistics, energy, and infrastructure sectors. China Unicom, along with China Mobile and China Telecom, has been actively promoting 5G private network solutions to enterprise customers, often in partnership with equipment vendors and systems integrators. The Chinese government has prioritized industrial 5G adoption as part of its broader manufacturing upgrade and digital economy initiatives, providing policy support and in some cases financial incentives for enterprises to invest in private network infrastructure.
Within the food processing sector specifically, private cellular networks address several persistent challenges, including the need for reliable communication in large, complex facilities, the integration of industrial IoT sensors for quality monitoring and predictive maintenance, and the coordination of automated guided vehicles and robotic systems increasingly deployed in modern processing lines. While the Yihai Kerry deployment focuses primarily on converged voice, video, and dispatch communications, the underlying 5G infrastructure provides the bandwidth and latency performance to support future applications such as real-time machine vision for quality inspection, sensor networks for environmental monitoring, and data analytics platforms that integrate production, logistics, and maintenance data. The deployment model, in which a carrier partner provides the network infrastructure and an equipment vendor supplies the devices and application layer, is becoming a standard approach in China’s private 5G market, balancing enterprise control with carrier expertise and scale.
| KEY INSIGHT The Yihai Kerry deployment demonstrates that private 5G upgrades in large industrial facilities can preserve existing device investments through converged platforms that bridge legacy and next-generation infrastructure, enabling enterprises to realize immediate operational benefits from enhanced video and location services while managing capital expenditure and minimizing user disruption. |
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What was the primary motivation for upgrading Yihai Kerry’s private network to 5G?
The upgrade enabled real-time video dispatching, GIS-based location tracking, and a unified platform for coordinating production, logistics, maintenance, and safety teams, capabilities that the legacy 4G network could not support with sufficient bandwidth and latency performance.
Q2: How does the deployment support both legacy and new communication devices?
Inrico’s converged platform integrates the existing 4G network, allowing legacy two-way radios to interoperate with new S350 5G smart devices on a unified dispatch system, preserving device investments and user familiarity while enabling phased adoption of advanced capabilities.
Q3: What role did China Unicom play in the deployment?
China Unicom provided the 5G private network infrastructure and spectrum resources, leveraging its carrier-grade core network functions to deliver enterprise-dedicated connectivity with the performance, security, and reliability required for mission-critical industrial communications.
Q4: What types of operational use cases does the upgraded network support?
The network supports push-to-talk voice communication, live video dispatching for remote inspection and troubleshooting, GIS-based personnel and device tracking, and centralized coordination during urgent incidents, enhancing situational awareness and response times across the campus.
Q5: Why is private 5G particularly suited to large food processing facilities?
Large facilities require secure, resilient communication systems that operate independently of public networks, support real-time coordination across multiple teams and buildings, and provide the bandwidth for emerging applications such as video inspection, sensor integration, and data analytics.
Q6: What are the S350 5G smart devices and how are they used?
The S350 devices are ruggedized handheld terminals combining traditional radio functionality with touchscreen interfaces, cameras, GPS, and broadband data access, enabling field personnel to communicate via voice, transmit live video, and be located precisely on campus maps.
