There are now only a few days left before it becomes compulsory to carry the Electronic Administrative Control Document (DeCA) on board vehicles; specifically, the regulation comes into force on 5 October, according to information from the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility.

All domestic transport within the national territory originating in or destined for Spain, as well as cabotage operations, must carry the document; however, international transport that passes partially through Spain is exempt. The following would therefore be affected by this measure:

Contractual shippers

those who contract the transport service.

Actual carriers:

those who physically carry out the transport.

Logistics operators

acting as intermediaries with contractual responsibility for the operation.

The regulations set out in Order TRM/282/2026 have clarified the scope: the shipper is responsible for the consignment details; the carrier, for the operational details; and both may face penalties if the document is missing, was not generated before the start of the journey, or fails to include mandatory information.

For companies such as ours, which transport liquid foodstuffs, where each service may be subject to changes to stops or changes of plan during the journey, generating the documentation before the driver sets off can be complicated if the process is not centralised and digitised.

In our case, we have implemented the management of these DeCA documents via our ERP system, and the traffic department generates and distributes this documentation to our drivers based on route planning carried out through our internal applications.

Mandatory requirements that this document must meet are

• It must be generated before the start of the route

• It must be capable of being displayed during a check via a screen or a printed QR code

• It must contain the contractual shipper’s details, the actual carrier, origin, destination, date, nature and weight of the goods, and the vehicle registration number.

• Access to the information must be retained for the statutory period

This digitisation represents a further step towards transport traceability and control based on digitised information; in fact, from July next year, the CMR or international consignment note will be valid throughout Europe in its digital eCMR version, although it will still be possible to carry it in printed form.

Legislation is therefore moving towards fully digitised road transport management, which in most cases simplifies administrative procedures and helps companies like ours to be more efficient and have greater control over our vehicles and deliveries.

A delivery doesn’t begin when the tanker sets off, nor does it end when the goods are delivered. Our team is working behind the scenes long before and after the service to ensure everything is in place.

It all begins when a customer issues a loading order, which can reach us through various channels – mostly via the customers’ own portals or by email, although we also receive orders via WhatsApp.

From there, our team springs into action, and the first step is to enter the order into our ERP system. This ensures it is recorded, and the system automatically retrieves the information needed to plan the collection:

Type of load

What it is: milk, drinking water, olive oil, sunflower oil, wine, fruit juices, glucose… depending on the product, different isothermal tankers are allocated, each with varying equipment.

Location, date and time of collection

Punctuality is important not only for delivery but also for collection, to facilitate industrial production processes and stock planning in warehouses.

Cargo specifications regarding required equipment

Fresh milk does not have the same characteristics or requirements as olive oil, let alone glucose. Whilst maintaining a constant temperature is essential for fresh milk, olive oil has a higher density and is loaded more slowly. At the other end of the scale, glucose requires special lobe pumps for loading due to its density.

Previous loads in the tanker.

It is common for isothermal tankers used to transport products such as fresh milk to carry only this product, or to require that previous loads meet certain specifications.

Availability of drivers

If we need to collect 8,000 litres of Ribera del Duero red wine in the province of Segovia for delivery to Burgos, we look for a way to dispatch the isothermal tanker that is closest and compatible with the load; however, the driver should not be close to the limit of their driving hours, so that they have sufficient time to complete the entire journey before the mandatory rest periods.

Potential subsequent load

The equation for finding the perfect isothermal tanker and driver also includes the factor of the load following unloading. If, in the previous example, we leave the 8,000 litres of wine in Burgos and take the opportunity to load 12,000 litres in Logroño to take to France, we only have a 130-kilometre empty journey, thereby making the most of the routes.

Once the driver, tanker and route have been selected, we finalise all the details in our management system and inform the client of all the service details by sending all the necessary documentation, such as identification documents, registration numbers, insurance certificates, etc.

The day before loading, the transport department sends all the instructions to the assigned driver via our digital tools, specifying all the load details and indicating the address of the associated tank-cleaning facility along with the cleaning specifications, as certain products require specific components in the cleaning process for isothermal tankers.

During the service, the transport department is constantly updated on the status of the consignment in real time, and we upload the documentation as it is generated (inward, collection, delivery and outward waybills, etc.) to the client’s portals.

Once the delivery is complete, the administrative work continues for the invoicing department, which is responsible for processing all the information contained in the ERP system and issuing the invoice within the timeframes agreed with the client, subject to approval by the transport department, which will verify that all invoiced items correspond to the services provided.

Our latest fleet renewal involved the purchase of 10 MAN D30 tractor units fitted with a new engine, which has enabled us to improve efficiency and safety through the incorporation of new active and passive safety technology.

Today we’d like to tell you that we’re continuing with the fleet renewal, but this time it’s the trailers’ turn. We’ve added 10 new isothermal tankers, which will replace part of our fleet.

These tankers are manufactured by Parcisa, part of the Polalsa Group, which has over 50 years’ experience in manufacturing this type of trailer.

These new units will enable us to increase the number of vehicles capable of carrying up to 32,000 litres or 44 tonnes in a single convoy, resulting in greater efficiency and cost savings per litre when transporting food-grade liquids.

Each of these trailers is fitted with external thermographs in each of the four compartments into which it is divided, making it easy to check the temperature from one of its sides.

This compartmentalisation plays an important role in safety as it helps to stabilise the load and minimise inertial forces caused by the shifting of liquids. All tankers are fitted with internal ribs that act as breakwaters for the liquid being transported, which is highly dangerous due to the inertial impacts it generates during braking, acceleration, and also when cornering and changing direction; however, the new tankers added to the fleet are fully compartmentalised, representing a further step towards reducing these inertial forces as it allows us to operate the tanker at half load, for example by completely filling two of the four compartments. This even makes it possible to diversify the type of load by transporting olive oil in two compartments and drinking water in the other two; or it is even possible to transport different types of oil in each of the compartments.

These units also join the ranks of vehicles capable of transporting higher-density food-grade liquids, such as glucose or high-density oils, as they are all equipped with lobe pumps capable of loading the 32,000 litres in a very short time.

Finally, these new tankers incorporate all the rollover prevention and safety measures in accordance with the latest regulations, such as the inclusion of pressure sensors on all tyres, which allow the driver to receive real-time information about the inflation pressure and temperature of each of the trailer’s tyres.

In this way, at Rios Sangiao we are continuing with our policy of incorporating the latest technical and technological improvements into our vehicles to improve efficiency and save costs. We are confident that this will help us to be even more reliable and, ultimately, to continue arriving on time every time.

August should be a quiet month of maintaining business levels, with activity picking up again in September without any major developments, but the truth is that this month is not like that.

We are living through a period of unprecedented global uncertainty due to armed conflicts and the stances taken by the main countries involved in them. Furthermore, we are in the midst of a major bilateral trade war over global economic hegemony. What could possibly go wrong?

Although old Europe isn’t fully embroiled in the ‘fight’ (for better or worse), it’s still taking the brunt of it. We felt the consequences at the time of the massive surge in commodity prices following the war in Ukraine, and fuel prices drove up the cost of everything else (apart from products such as cereals, which had already risen without any help).

Yesterday, fuel prices once again edged towards record highs when the United States decided that Iran had crossed its red line, but they were ultimately held in check by the mirage of an agreement between the opposing sides in the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 20 per cent of the world’s crude oil passes.

Today, that mirage is fading once more, like someone approaching an oasis in the desert, whilst crude oil is weighing ever more heavily on the pockets of half the world.

Meanwhile, in Spain, we in the transport sector – and, for our part, the food liquids transport sector – are once again relying on government promises that sound like support for the sector in the form of rebates and compensation for fuel price rises. We are working on it, but we know from past experience that it is difficult to finalise this support and that by the time the money starts to flow, too much time has already passed.

To be specific, diesel prices in Europe in the second quarter of 2026 rose by 27 per cent compared with the same period in 2025, reaching €2.19 per litre, causing operating costs to rise by approximately 10 per cent according to the French Comité National Routier, and this increase is set to be passed on to shippers.

As if that were not enough, as we mentioned in our previous post, road transport faces a significant shortage of skilled workers, amounting to 13 per cent of all vacancies. To put this into perspective, nearly half a million jobs need to be filled. This means that companies lack the flexibility to adapt to changes in demand, leading to higher operating costs.

So the outlook is not the best. There is high demand for the transport of liquid foodstuffs, but the challenges facing the sector are unpredictable and complex because the solution generally lies in macroeconomics.

Be that as it may, we will continue to do what we do best and remain committed to our customers.

Recently, the magazine *Transporte 3* highlighted a labour issue which, far from being confined to the road transport sector or the transport of liquid foodstuffs, is a cross-cutting problem in today’s labour market. This issue is work absenteeism.

The magazine reports that the employers’ organisation UNO Logística has detected all-time highs in absenteeism during 2025, with a rate of around 7.7 per cent – which translates to just over one and a half million people failing to turn up for work each day.

It is, in fact, a widespread problem affecting the national economy, resulting in very significant losses that hit small and medium-sized enterprises hardest, as they lack the financial and operational capacity to withstand such setbacks. Furthermore, the logistics sector is particularly hard hit due to the operational intensity of its activities.

At Rios Sangiao, we are no strangers to this issue and we strive to minimise it as much as possible within our means, working alongside our talent and transport departments. We endeavour to optimise the conditions in which our drivers carry out their work, using state-of-the-art vehicles that provide comfort and safety on the road and help to minimise ergonomic discomfort and the health risks that may arise from long hours behind the wheel. Furthermore, we are absolutely scrupulous about the rest periods stipulated by law, and we go beyond these as far as our operations allow.

The physical and mental wellbeing of our staff plays a decisive role in reducing the absenteeism that is prevalent in our sector and in other sectors.

We firmly believe that Rios Sangiao’s commitment to its staff must be mutual, and that we must function as a team in which each person strives to achieve the highest standard in their work, whilst the company recognises the value of each individual and looks after their wellbeing at work through talent retention policies that prevent staff turnover – which we mentioned recently in relation to holidays – and absenteeism due to sick leave caused by physical or mental health issues.

Ultimately, all of this results in a committed, stable and reliable service in which food liquid deliveries are made on time because both staff and machinery are looked after to the highest standard so that they are always available.

On 5 July, our town hosted the 5th Camiño Inglés Half Marathon, which includes a 10 km race for those who prefer a less demanding route than the 21-kilometre course.

Rios Sangiao, alongside other brands, has been sponsoring this sporting event for several editions now, in line with our policy of cooperation and social action within our local community.

With a successful turnout of over 300 registered participants, the race has established itself as a regular fixture on our community’s athletics calendar.

What makes this sporting event unique is that the route follows the Camino de Santiago in its entirety along the English Way, making it an event that combines sport, nature, heritage and the promotion of the area’s culture, with visibility enhanced by the high turnout and the sporting calibre of the participants.

In the women’s half-marathon category, Beatriz F.G. clocked a time of 1 hour 30 minutes and 34 seconds, whilst in the men’s category, Yago G. M. recorded a time of 1 hour 13 minutes and 37 seconds.

Ainoa G. I. took 39 minutes and 21 seconds to complete the 10 kilometres, whilst Fernando V. A. finished in 35 minutes and 24 seconds.

Several media outlets reported on the event, and officials such as Antonio Leira, head of the Sports Department at the Provincial Council of A Coruña; Álex Doval, mayor of Oroso; Óscar Rodríguez, Councillor for Safety and the Environment; Xabier Castro, a member of the board of the Tambre Athletics Club; and Antonio Riveira, head of security for the race and president of CD Móvete no Camiño.

Another successful event in terms of turnout and participation, of which we feel a part, and which helps to raise the profile and put our town on the map – a town of which we are deeply proud, as it was here that our food liquids transport company was founded over 40 years ago.

In Spain, ‘British punctuality’ is often cited as the gold standard for arriving on time at a destination, but the truth is that the British are not particularly special in this regard. If anything, it is we Spaniards who are the exception, as the concept of punctuality we have on the peninsula is rather unique.

In the road transport sector, punctuality is understood simply as a delivery arriving on the scheduled day – and that’s it. A delivery is scheduled for a specific day without further detail, but in our transport of liquid foodstuffs with deliveries across Europe, the concept changes radically.

At Rios Sangiao, we have been working for years with European clients on international transport routes, and in this market it is essential to understand from the outset that punctuality involves what we in Spain would call ‘exactness’. It is not enough for the goods to be delivered on the scheduled day; they must also be delivered at the scheduled time.

In most of the countries where we carry out transports of juices, milk and food liquids for human consumption in general, punctuality is expected to include a specific delivery time slot. Countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and even Italy do not accept ‘open-ended’ deliveries. In the deliveries we carry out, we form part of a large production chain that requires maximum coordination between its links to avoid production stoppages, which entail enormous subsequent start-up costs and a loss of efficiency and profitability.

Thus, it is common that when we deliver glucose to Germany, olive oil to northern France or juices to Italy, we have a specific time slot – which does not usually exceed one hour – for unloading or loading the goods. In this way, the product leaves the factory and is distributed without incurring storage costs for the producer. Alternatively, the product arrives at the factory and is processed without losing its properties due to storage time, during which oxidation or any other form of degradation might occur. Planning is key to efficiency.

Punctuality at the highest level

Delivery accuracy is even more critical in certain, even more complex environments such as Rotterdam, where we cover several routes. This city, with a port stretching over forty kilometres, is home to Europe’s most important land-sea logistics hub, and the volume of traffic and goods passing through this point is absolutely staggering: nearly 430 million tonnes handled annually and more than 100,000 vessels.

For all this activity to function smoothly, punctuality here demands that arrivals are calculated in minute-long windows, and departures and arrivals are fully monitored to ensure that everything is synchronised and runs like clockwork.

Although it is within the port area itself that the strictest controls are in place and delivery and collection windows are most tightly restricted, companies located on the outskirts of the port area are subject to very similar controls because, after all, they operate within the port and must therefore adapt to its rhythms,

so it does not matter if the Spanish wine – to give an example – that we might transport to Rotterdam does not go directly to the port, because the company where we unload it operates in a similar way to the entire logistics network in the area.

Working in this way demands professionalism and constant reviews of the transport department’s planning to fine-tune routes, timetables and efficiency as much as possible, coordinating our fleet with a level of detail that is unusual in domestic deliveries.

When we talk about on-time deliveries, at Rios Sangiao we’re really talking about precision.

Saint John’s Eve is just a few days away. It is not only one of the most important celebrations in Galicia—our place of origin—but it also marks the summer solstice. Even though days will start getting shorter again, this is the time when everyone enjoys, or looks forward to enjoying, a well-deserved vacation.

In the food-grade liquid transport sector, we cannot say that the workload slows down as it slightly does at the end of the year. As we recently shared, the main ingredient in ice cream is milk—in case you didn't know—and we specialize in transporting it from farms to factories. That is already a big slice of the pie, but the transport of olive oil, drinking water, or glucose are not services that see a drop in demand during the summer.

What mixes the summer cocktail is that, even though demand remains steady, our team also needs to kick back and relax under a palm tree in Santo Domingo… or under a grapevine in Baiona, which is surely just as pleasant.

How do we meet the same transport demand while heading out to Baiona? This is where staff scheduling, traffic planning, and another key ingredient of our cocktail come into play: driver labor market trends.

At the beginning of the year, we plan holidays and establish a shift system. This is often supplemented by hiring new drivers to optimize the number of team members enjoying their summer holidays. Fortunately, we can offer attractive incentives for food-grade liquid transport professionals, allowing us to fill vacancies quickly.

Furthermore, at Rios Sangiao, we have a clear talent retention policy. It is highly unusual for our drivers to "hang up the steering wheel" during July and August only to return in September. Commitment to our clients is a core value across the company, and we are certain that teamwork allows us to provide better conditions.

So, it doesn't matter when we need to deliver eight thousand litres of fresh milk to a factory, or ten thousand litres of olive oil to Rotterdam. We have everything ready thanks to the commitment of our team, especially the talent department, traffic management, and our drivers.

With June just a few days away and the summer solstice fast approaching, we’re already in the thick of the prime season for ice cream consumption, and its star ingredient is, quite literally, milk.

We’ve already moved on from the yoghurt ice cream craze; for a few years, everyone was eating the same ice cream, with the only variation being a few toppings that made for a highly profitable combination for brands that grew at breakneck speed. But traditional ice cream parlours also capitalised on that craze and gained significant momentum, which enabled many to stay in business and consolidate their position.

Today, ice cream is no longer a seasonal product as it was a decade ago, and its peak consumption in summer is extraordinary, giving an extra boost to milk production and transport and helping to absorb a supply that sometimes exceeds demand.

We all think that milk gives ice cream its characteristic flavour, nutrients and creaminess, but it also provides functional molecules that are essential for the production and preservation of ice cream, for which fats and proteins are responsible.

Good milk for ice cream production would be milk with good organoleptic characteristics and consistent, constant protein levels across all production batches. In this way, the same production process will result in a predictable flavour and texture in line with consumer expectations.

To achieve this, it is important to maintain processes and supply points, whilst ensuring that milk is transported with the utmost care so as not to alter its properties. We have previously discussed here how we collect milk from farms, as well as the strict temperature controls required during milk handling and storage times.

A change in the properties of the milk can ruin entire production batches of dairy products, such as ice cream, altering crucial aspects like flavour and consistency, with significant costs in terms of product loss and damage to reputation.

MEPs on the Transport Committee have proposed a reduction in tolls of up to 75% for sustainable heavy goods vehicles.

This proposal has come a long way since it was first mooted, which began with free tolls for electric lorries until June 2031; but we already know that the roll-out of this type of vehicle has been slower than expected and that its implementation is more complex than anticipated, partly due to a lack of charging infrastructure. Therefore, in an attempt to extend the benefits to less polluting combustion-powered transport, the discount has been extended to a 75% reduction in tolls for efficient vehicles, and this includes trailers and semi-trailers.

At Rios Sangiao, we provide our food liquid transport services using isothermal tankers capable of maintaining the load’s temperature for 72 hours with fluctuations of less than 2°C. Without refrigeration units. We see efficiency in this operation as our trailers consume neither fuel nor electricity to maintain a stable temperature.

However, the European directive on the efficiency of trailers and semi-trailers stipulates that only trailers equipped with electric refrigeration technology are eligible for these incentives.

We would like to point out here that ‘zero consumption’ is more sustainable than reduced consumption, and our state-of-the-art isothermal tankers represent the highest level of efficiency in the temperature-controlled transport of liquid foodstuffs.