Colas optimizes bitumen supply planning with Hexaly
A subsidiary of the Colas group, the Continental Bitumen company is responsible for managing bitumen supply for all of Colas’ industrial sites, including asphalt plants and binder factories. Bitumen is a strategic procurement category, essential for road construction and central to Colas’ core business. Colas purchases bitumen from refineries and local depots across France and neighboring countries, while also operating two strategic depots in Blaye and Lavéra, supplied by ship. These depots provide partial independence from local market fluctuations, securing a stable supply for Colas’ operations.
While Colas ensures the supply of a critical resource, the complexity of planning monthly purchases presents significant operational challenges. To address these issues, Colas has entrusted Hexaly with optimizing its supply planning process, enabling the company to efficiently allocate volumes, minimize costs, and optimize margins through automation and advanced optimization techniques.
Colas’ bitumen supply planning problem
Colas’ supply planning problem is multifaceted, involving the balancing of numerous constraints and objectives. The company manages 180 installations that consume around 500,000 tonnes of bitumen annually, generating approximately €250 million in revenue. The monthly planning process requires integrating:
- Forecasted needs from each Colas site
- Depot stock levels to cover production gaps and incoming shipments
- Contractual commitments and spot purchase availability from suppliers
- Approved sources of bitumen for each installation
- Transportation costs
The main decisions are determining which volumes should be sourced from which suppliers and depots, and how these volumes should be allocated across installations. The objectives are to secure supply, minimize purchase costs, and optimize Colas’ margin. Plans must be completed within a very tight timeframe of 1 week from receiving supplier offers to communicating purchase instructions to sites.
Quick, optimal supply planning using Hexaly
Thanks to Hexaly, Colas can now model its supply planning problem precisely and efficiently. Hexaly’s advanced algorithms enable planners to quickly reach optimal solutions, taking into account all constraints, price variations, and logistical considerations. Modeling is straightforward, and large instances—covering hundreds of sites, multiple suppliers, contract types, and depot constraints—are solved efficiently.
Since adopting Hexaly, Colas has reduced planning time from 1 week to 1 day, integrated supply data into accounting processes, automated KPIs, and can perform detailed market analyses to support strategic decision-making, while generating significant financial savings.
Why Hexaly?
Before Hexaly, Colas relied on Excel and manual planning, which made it difficult to achieve optimal allocations and increased the risk of errors. With Hexaly, Colas now has complete confidence in achieving optimal supply plans, ensuring both cost efficiency and margin optimization. Automated planning reduces workload and frees the team to focus on strategic decisions. Hexaly’s optimization also enhances visibility into costs and supplier allocations, while ensuring timely execution. By leveraging Hexaly, Colas secures its bitumen supply, optimizes purchases, and strengthens its competitiveness, all while gaining operational efficiency and data-driven insight for future planning.