Sirtrack - wildlife tracking solutions
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| Attaching a Sirtrack
transmitter to an
Australian crocodile. Image - The Best Picture Show Company |
Sirtrack, our wholly-owned New Zealand subsidiary, continues to be a very successful, high-technology, fast-growing, global niche business. Its revenue exceeded $2.6 million for the first time this year. Exports continue to increase and now form 80% of sales. Sales have increased from 2003/04, and the company continues to be highly profitable.
Sirtrack has undergone substantial change in the last year and is well positioned for planned growth to $6 million in sales in three years. The Sirtrack Board undertook a long and careful search for a new CEO to replace Dave Ward, the founding Business Manager who retired last year. Mike Kelly, formerly with Dynamic Controls, began as Sirtrack’s new CEO in January 2005.
New business and marketing initiatives include substantial out-sourcing of circuit board manufacture, improved financial systems, a new marketing plan and activities, a substantially revamped web site, and new employment arrangements that replace and enhance the previous employment agreement, which had expired.
Sirtrack has substantial new research and development capacity in both hardware and software engineering. This is to support a stream of new, research-led products—the source of future growth. Sales of our new contact logger commenced in 2004/05. The contact logger records “meetings” of animals, crucial information for research in wildlife disease transmission and in various kinds of ecological research. Forward orders for the contact logger are strong.
Other new products developed for launch in 2005/06 include our new Auto-Track 350 (an automatic VHF tracking system) and Fastloc. Auto-Track 350 is a complete system for automatically tracking up to 50 animals, eliminating the large amount of manual effort normally required. It was developed by Manaaki Whenua, for its own research needs, in collaboration with Graham Digital Design and Data Beam Systems. We have strong forward orders for this new system, which is manufactured under licence by Sirtrack.
Fastloc is a new global positioning system receiver that requires only a fraction of a second to establish preliminary location coordinates, which are stored on board and delivered to a base station when a suitable link is available. Data are then post-processed to give location information. Fastloc is ideal for marine mammals, enabling many more position fixes to be obtained whenever the animal reaches the surface—hitherto impossible to achieve.
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| Lynx wearing a Sirtrack radio transmitter collar. © Mary Lloyd, 2000 |
As Sirtrack grows, the shareholders will be actively exploring capital-raising to finance growth and acquisition of new technologies and complementary businesses. Sirtrack is an excellent example of commercialisation that has grown from Manaaki Whenua’s research and innovation. Its future will be solidly grounded in new products enabling wildlife scientists and other researchers to do what could not be done before.
| Talk to us | |
Mike Kelly Email 
Ph 0800 SIRTRACK (06) 877 7736 |
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| On the web | |
| www.sirtrack.com |