Inmarsat BGAN M2M (machine-to-machine) connectivity is supporting the fast-growing aquaculture industry in Chile.
Inmarsat’s regional partner Tesacom has provided the reliable remote monitoring and control service to a company which specialises in developing oxygen and ozone solutions for the salmon farming industry.
Aquaculture is one of the most rapidly expanding food industries in the world, due to a steady increase in the demand for fish and the continuing depletion of wild fish stocks. Chile is the second largest salmon producer after Norway.
Salmon farmers are constantly looking for innovative ways to accelerate the growth of their stocks, and a crucial means of doing so is ensuring that sea cages – large nets attached to floating platforms anchored off-shore – have the optimal level of oxygen.
Chilean company OXZO has developed an innovative sea-based oxygen generation system called Oxymar, which speeds up the cultivation of fish. Constant monitoring and automatic adjustment of oxygen levels in the sea cages makes always-on connectivity essential.
OXZO is now using BGAN M2M for cost effective IP data communications, reliable even in rough seas because it uses Inmarsat’s L-band global satellite and ground network, which delivers 99.9% availability.
John Marcus, Managing Director at OXZO, said: “We rely upon being in constant communication with our Oxymar systems, which enables us to monitor and adjust oxygen levels in real time and control the systems remotely.
“With our previous VSAT system we did not have that functionality, due to the constant losses of connectivity. We were also incurring significant costs by having to send a maintenance technician out to our sites to realign the communications infrastructure and restore connectivity manually. However, with the new BGAN solution, that has all changed and we’ve been enjoying seamless connectivity.
“The solution provided by Tesacom and Inmarsat has been hugely important in enabling us to deliver a better service to our clients, and we are rolling it out across all our Oxymar oxygenation platforms.”
*Read the full case study here.
