Australian, Norwegian marine companies partner in IoT to transport live fish

A new partnership between marine transportation companies, Australian FloatPac and Norwegian LipFish AS, may be an example of an application of the internet of things (IoT) that could catch on in the airfreight industry.

LipFish AS said it has “worked closely” with FishPac – the oxygen-transport-systems-specific arm of the Australian aquaculture company – to develop cloud-based data-collecting technology, which uses sensors to monitor the environment within containers that contain live fish. The database refreshes itself every three minutes to give all stakeholders constant updates on the state of the live cargo.

“In the unlikely event of something going wrong,” such as a change in temperature or the water’s salinity, “we will be able to pinpoint this problem quickly and fix it,” said Robert Robertson, owner of LipFish.

FishPac launched in 2000 and has since moved more than 250,000 containers – each containing up to 500 kilograms of live fish and marine life – for clients in Australia, Indonesia, Maldives, Japan, Canada, the United States and Asia, Iceland and Belgium.

Robertson added, however, that the FloatPac/LipFish partnership will be a devoted mostly to the European market.