FOUR DATA UNITI Expo 2026 stand 3EF46 – IoT solutions for oil depots and car washes

7 min reading – Published on 07/05 – Updated on 07/05 at 15h20

• UNITI Expo 2026: benchmarks before Stuttgart
• Connected oil depots: the PLC and the ATEX probe
• Connected scale: the new thing for carwashes
• Meet FOUR DATA at stand 3EF46
• FAQs

UNITI Expo returns to Stuttgart from May 19 to 21, 2026, and FOUR DATA will be there. At stand 3EF46 in Hall 3, the team will be presenting two building blocks from its IoT ecosystem, calibrated for visitors to the show: a connected PLC for oil depot supervision, already deployed by manufacturers such as YORK Lubrifiants, and a connected scale for monitoring maintenance product cans – a novelty designed for carwash operators. Two subjects, one common thread: moving away from approximate management to data-driven management.

UNITI expo is Europe’s leading trade show for service station and carwash operators. Edition after edition, it brings together the key players in fuel distribution, payment, car wash and new mobility in three halls at Messe Stuttgart.

For 2026, the organizer is announcing 18,000 expected visitors, more than 500 exhibitors and some 45,000 m² spread over four themed zones:

• Technology, payment & logistics
• Car wash & car care
• Oil companies & fuel retailers
• Shop & convenience

Almost 60% of visitors come from Germany, 35% from the rest of Europe – it’s one of the few meetings where a fuel oil distributor from Baden-Württemberg, an Austrian network operator and a Swiss carwash operator meet on the same day.

This is precisely why FOUR DATA is coming to the show with two solutions rather than one. Field data is no longer the preserve of industrial warehouses; it is beginning to transform the business of carwashes too, and UNITI Expo is the place where these two worlds meet.

A fuel depot – whether it’s a logistics platform, the site of a fuel oil distributor or the backyard of a service station network operator – can’t be managed like an isolated tank. We often have ten, twenty or thirty tanks of different sizes, with products that are not all compatible, trucks that unload in a chain, and operators who have to monitor levels, prevent overflow and keep reliable records of movements.

Manual management leaves gaps: a reading taken at the wrong time, an inaccurate mechanical gauge, an operator entering figures into Excel on Fridays. And the slightest measurement discrepancy means that deliveries are rushed, cash is tied up in overstock, or ATEX compliance takes a hit.

On the stand, two bricks are displayed side by side:

Theconnected PLC is the brain of the depot. It aggregates level probes via 4-20 mA analog signals or industrial buses, displays levels on a local touchscreen with threshold indicators, and sends everything back to the Desk platform via integrated 4G. On the control side, it directly controls a pump variator – useful during unloading – and triggers overflow alerts in real time. On paper, it supervises up to 30 tanks on a single site.

The TEK 898 ATEX probe is the field device. Ex ia IIB T3 certified, IP68 overmolded, it measures level by hydrostatic pressure with up to 12 daily readings, and runs on a long-life battery. It is compatible with fuels, biofuels and many industrial chemicals. For LPG tanks, the TEKIO 822 (ratiometric reading on a Rochester gauge) takes over – the same one used by gas distributors in Wallonia and Luxembourg.

The concrete illustration has been before our eyes since 2024 at the YORK Lubrifiants site in La Garde, Var. The lubricant formulator, acquired by the Swiss Motorex group in 2015, has connected its 20,000 to 50,000-liter production tanks to a wired architecture with PLCs, plus 300 customer tanks equipped with cellular autonomy.

“Before connectivity, we did things the old-fashioned way. A double-level gauge, and a reading every Friday to estimate the following week’s consumption.”

– Olivier Duperriez, Technical Manager YORK Lubrifiants

Today, monitoring is continuous, truck unloading is secure, and route optimization is based on real data, not estimates.

On the distribution side, feedback from Nielen Joseph in Wallonia shows the impact on the delivery side: around five minutes saved per customer equipped, or one to two hours per round, and an average discrepancy between transmitted data and actual volumes of less than 3% on gas tanks. UNITI Expo visitors who operate a fleet of customer tanks will recognize the mechanics.

In an automatic car wash – gantry, tunnel, self-service – chemicals arrive in 20, 60 or 200-liter cans, or even in one-ton IBCs. Today, monitoring is very often visual: an operator passes by, looks at the level in the can, makes a note or not, and recommends by the ladle.

The result: product shortages in the middle of a peak day (and therefore degraded wash cycles), overstocking to compensate, and no fine-grained visibility on actual consumption per cycle or per vehicle washed.

The logic is exactly the same as for fuel tanks – except that conventional level measurement doesn’t work well on these formats: variable geometries, different viscosities, movable cans. Measuring weight is simpler, more reliable and more universal.

The principle: the can or IBC is placed on the scale, which continuously transmits its weight via IoT networks(LTE-M, NB-IoT depending on the site). The data feeds the Desk platform, where operators can find their drums just as they find their tanks: remote levels, low threshold alerts, consumption history.

For a network of multi-site car washes, the leap is clear – from empirical local management to centralized control, identical to that of a fleet of fuel tanks.

UNITI Expo 2026 is the first public opportunity for European operators to see the solution in action. For FOUR DATA, it’s also confirmation that its ” hardware + platform + services ” logic extends beyond oil & gas – the products change, but the business of data management remains the same.

The team will be present all three days, from May 19 to 21, 2026, in Hall 3 – Stand 3EF46 (Carwash & Logistics zone). On site:

• Live demonstrations of the TEK 898 ATEX probe andmulti-tank PLC.
• Demonstration of the connected scale for cleaning products in its carwash use case.
• Guided tour of the Desk white-label platform for distributors and operators piloting their own end-customers.
• Direct exchange with David Rotaru, Key Account Manager Switzerland / Germany / Austria, on DACH deployments (Heizöl, LPG, AdBlue) and ERP integration projects.

To book a time slot in advance – recommended, as the diary fills up quickly – an appointment form is available on the website. Visitors who can’t make it to Stuttgart can request a video demonstration of the same solutions; the session is simply rescheduled with the same team once the show is over.

Can’t travel to Stuttgart? Ask for a video demo of the same solutions.

Article written with the expertise of David Rotaru, Key Account Manager Switzerland / Germany / Austria at FOUR DATA – he supports DACH operators (Heizöl, LPG, AdBlue, lubricants) on their industrial IoT deployments and will be present all three days on stand 3EF46.