Implementing McGregor Diesel Fuel Management at Romani Pastoral Co
| Publication date: | 29 June 2022 |
| Project status: | Completed |
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Summary
Digital farms are important for the longevity of Australian red meat supply chains, whether that be to inform consumers of our credentials (CN30 and Beef Sustainability initiative) or to improve business productivity. This project is the second digital farm to be rolled out and will focus on installation requirements, farm user experience and quantifying the return on investment. The purpose of this research was to determine if the McGregor Diesel Fuel Management solution works in remote sites without mobile broadband Internet coverage on a range of assets undertaken at Romani Pastoral Co – Windy Station.
Objectives
The project was designed to monitor and manage fuel usage and levels across the fleet of Romani Pastoral Company including their business and personal assets. Theft control using immobilisation and customised reporting are assisting in day-to-day administration. This allows for:
• Improved accuracy of fuel records
• Driver Identification of assets and drivers
• Theft Control using immobilisation techniques
• Real Time Data in a cloud-based software solution
Key findings
Real time data allows Romani Pastoral Co to manage and monitor diesel across a plurality of remote sites, enabling the farming enterprise or other authorised individuals to obtain an accurate overview of tanks storing diesel. Diesel distributed across a plurality of remote sites is getting visualised in a manner that is easy to use and understand. This enables better decisions to be made regarding the purchase of diesel, and reduces the likelihood that diesel unexpectedly runs out in one of the tanks. David Lee of Romani Pastoral Co has advised this system has increased their efficiency around the following:
• Fuel ordering and cash flow
• Accuracy and availability of data for fuel records to lodge their BAS
• Fuel Usage – monitoring of assets and staff usage
• Productivity – allowing David time to concentrate on operational matters
Benefits to industry
Digital AgTech providers often make fictious claims about where their technologies and solutions are up to. Digital farms play an important role in vexing these claims and determining what Red Meat Producers can deploy today and the value proposition behind each. This component investigated the benefits of automatically monitoring and managing diesel use on farm for real time data on fuel levels and usage, accurate and transparent reporting on drivers and asset usage and easy reporting for fuel tax claims.
MLA action
The learnings from the Romani Digital demonstration farm project has helped shape the MLA Digital Agriculture business plan. A need has been identified to further test AgTech which is market ready with producers in real world situations to identify the use cases and value propositions of the solutions beyond the simple demonstration of them. This is guiding the current and future MLA investments in this space.
Future research
The sensors are currently limited by the type of connectivity solutions available in the desired area. This is an issue for implementation in Northern Australian production systems and further work is required to develop connectivity solutions which will suit these environments. The research partner is also investigating options to upgrade the control panel to enable multiple inputs of data to include the following:
• Driver
• Asset Number
• Hours or Kilometres
• Crop Description
To enable the above capabilities would benefit farming enterprises throughout Australia, increasing the overall efficiency and management of their fuel and records.
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For more information Contact Project Manager: John McGuren |
