Ceres Tag smart cattle tag to use Globalstar for communication

By Stuart Corner

Australian IoT company Ceres Tag, developer of a smart ear tag for cattle, is to use Globalstar satellite services to provide communications with its tags.

The two companies have signed a commercial agreement that follows Ceres Tag partnering with Globalstar in November 2019 to trial the use of Globalstar for communication with its tags.

Globalstar will enable Ceres Tag to supply cattle owners an automated daily recording of information about their animals including their intake of pasture feed, which it says enable owners to determine feed efficiency, make genetic selection and manage greenhouse gas.

Ceres Tag CEO, David Smith, said: “With over one billion cattle in the world and a similar number of sheep and goats, we now have a low-cost limitless way to monitor our animals.”

He said that the company was looking to introduce versions of Ceres Tag for wildlife and pets in 2022.

Globalstar CEO David Kagan said more than 80 percent of the world’s livestock were located in remote locations “where there is no infrastructure and where you may only see the animals once or twice a year.”

IoTAustralia had reported in August 2018 that Ceres Tag was planning a trial on 500 cattle belonging to pastoral company Casson Group on its 400,000 hectare Aileron Pastoral Holdings property 135km north of Alice Springs. Casson had become an investor in Ceres Tag and said a successful trial would trigger pre-commercial sales of thousands of Ceres Tag smart ear tags to Aileron Pastoral Holdings.

Ceres’ Smith told IoTAustralia at the time that the battery did not need replacing, making the device last for the life of the beast to which it is attached.

These trials were followed by large scale trials in collaboration with CSIRO, Meat & Livestock Australia, Queensland Government. James Cook University and the Clandestine Design Group.

CSIRO’s Data61 announced the trials, saying they would be conducted across multiple environmental and climatic conditions to test and validate the operational proficiency of Ceres Tag’s complete livestock information platforms.

The commercial version of the cattle tag will be launched on May 1 at the Beef Australia Exhibition in Rockhampton Queensland and will be available for purchase and use worldwide from the Ceres Tag website.

The company says it initial market focus will be Australia/New Zealand and North America.

Stuart Corner is editor, IoT Australia where this story first appeared.

Picture: Ceres Tag

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