eSAT Global — a US company planning to use existing geostationary satellites for IoT applications — has scored its first Australian customer: Smart Paddock, developer of a livestock monitoring tag.
Together, the two companies say they will seek to provide over $9 billion in benefits to the Australian meat and livestock industry.
Smart Paddock’s Bluebell tags attach to the cow’s ear and monitors temperature, mobility, and location. Farmers access this information from a web dashboard or mobile phone application. The tags presently use LoRaWAN to communicate.
eSAT Global and Smart Paddock will trial eSAT Global’s direct-to-GEO-satellite communication modules integrated with Smart Paddock’s Bluebell cattle tags They says they expect to begin trials by Q4 of 2020 and have global availability in 2021.
They aim to capitalise on increasing rigorous mandated requirements of cattle monitoring.
“Passive identification will be usurped by real-time tracking, health reporting, theft protection, enhanced biosecurity and identification,” they say.
Tracing cattle from paddock to slaughter
“Livestock will now be able to be traced on and off the farm and live exports will be able to be monitored all the way to their final destination.”
Smart Paddock CEO Darren Wolchyn, said: “we have been searching for a satellite connectivity solution which would facilitate the fastest possible adoption by farmers, [one with] no need to build and pay for infrastructure and a product which will work anywhere in the world. We expect that not only will eSAT deliver anywhere connectivity with the form factor we require but at a price which will make it easy for farmers to justify their investment.”
eSAT Global’s regional director Rick Somerton said there could be enormous benefits to Australian and international farmers and ranchers from the delivery of 24×7 connect smart tags.
In 2018 Meat and Livestock Australia estimated the benefits of smart tags to the industry at more than $9 billion, over and beyond the bio security benefits of being able to trace and track every animal.
Huge savings touted
According to Smart Paddock there is a seven percent mortality rate of Australian cattle: 450,000 deaths per year representing lost income of $700 million.
Smart Paddock and eSAT Global say they believe similar benefits will be available to many of the world’s three billion sheep and cows. The company has just announced its first deployment: on 100 sheep in Western Victoria.
IoTAustralia reported Somerton’s appointment last November and we quoted eSAT executive chairman David Lyon, saying the company saw Australia and New Zealand as “two advanced markets with significant opportunities in agriculture, mining and energy.”
