Agrigate and GeoSamba: Growing with Timbercorp

06 February 2009, 9:13am

AGRIGATE and GeoSamba have been branching out in the past two years, helping Timbercorp – Australia’s leading agribusiness investment manager – consolidate its operations into a one-stop shop.

Managing high-quality, large-scale forestry and horticultural projects for investors, Timbercorp needed a consolidated view of its operations (described as a “single point of truth”) that allowed the company to handle its many facets, using relevant and up-to-date information.

The Australian-built GeoSamba technology from NGIS Australia provides sophisticated mapping and geographic analysis and has been integrated into the Agrigate agribusiness management system to help Timbercorp achieve this goal.

“Timbercorp manages all sorts of farm land, covering everything from eucalypts and olives to almonds, avocadoes and mangoes, and has to manage different life cycles for different crops across thousands of hectares of land,” Agribusiness Program Manager Alden Lee said.

“The Agrigate application allows Timbercorp to manage its operational budgets, along with associated works management, by providing a complete tool for precision tree-farming needs.

“This includes activities such as planting, pest control, nutrition and fire control operations, among others, and provides an auditable quality management framework to ensure quality is embedded within their operations.

“Essentially, Agrigate is an engine that enables Timbercorp to manage all of its assets with ease. An integrated spatial component allows people to see different aspects of their operations, such as how much of a plantation has been fertilised – and with what – or whether it was subject to a pest control activity.”

Timbercorp has gone through two “go-live” stages with Agrigate – the first, in early 2008, involved data transformation and migration, bringing together all the disparate forms of land and plantation information. This was necessary in order to prepare for the implementation of the works management component in stage two.

The second stage was aligned with Timbercorp’s financial year from October to September, configuring budgets and establishing suggested management activities, according to regions, plantations, rotation cycles and best practice.

“This helps to better manage tree farm (and eventually other crop) assets by allowing Timbercorp to create a workflow,” Mr Lee said.

“So when it’s time to thin the plants, for instance, a work order is sent to a contractor. You can audit the work as it is being done, processing payments against the activity.”

The GeoSamba Universal product is available as a standard enterprise system, ready for use off-the-shelf, by emailing geosamba@ngis.com.au.

GeoSamba Universal product

Geo: International