Ceres Tag and Caason Group’s Aileron Pastoral Holdings partner for commercial trials of world leading livestock smart ear tag

Ceres Tag Pty Ltd and Caason Group today announce a Joint Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Ceres Tag is set to trial up to 500 of their world leading smart ear tags on the iconic Aileron Pastoral Holdings property, owned by Caason.

Highlights

• Aileron Pastoral Holdings (APH) is located approximately 135km north of Alice Springs with more than 1 million acres of land (4,082 square kilometres)
• The MOU is further collaboration after an early strategic investment was made by Caason Group into Ceres Tag
• The trial is part of a research and development partnerships with Meat & Livestock Australia Donor Company and Advance Queensland; CSIRO, Data61 and James Cook University also have technology development collaboration agreements with Ceres Tag
• The trial will incorporate the full range of Ceres Tag’s capability including GPS position, temperature and motion monitoring
• National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) traceability considerations incorporated into trial

David Smith, Ceres Tag CEO & Development Director, said: “We are very pleased to announce the signing of an MOU to trial our revolutionary Ceres Tag livestock smart ear tag at Aileron. The MOU follows a strategic investment made by Caason into Ceres Tag.”

Craig Astill, Caason Group MD & CEO and Aileron Pastoral Holdings MD, said: “The MOU demonstrates Caason Group’s commitment to research, development and innovation into the Australian meat industry and improving our organic range of products from our property.”

“We had been seeking game changer technology for APH operations and Ceres Tag demonstrated the features offering considerable benefit for farm operations and other stakeholders directly and indirectly involved in the industry.”

If successful, this trial will trigger pre-commercial sales of thousands of Ceres Tag smart ear tags to Aileron Pastoral Holdings.

Mr Smith said: “the opportunity to collaborate with Caason Group on their iconic APH property made complete sense and prepares Ceres Tag for environmental challenges by subjecting our tags to robust testing and validation together with a commercial outcome.”

Trials are expected to commence in April 2019 in line with the requirements of Ceres Tag’s Meat & Livestock Australia Donor Company Research & Development funding agreement. These trials will form part of the final testing and verification of the Ceres Tag smart ear tags prior to commercial production and sales.

Objectives of the trial cover testing on a range of cattle types, durability of the tag in a desert/semi-arid climate, software testing and traceability herd movement data analysis. The benefits are economic, environmental and social; and are expected to include improved animal health, theft reduction and land use efficiency.