Beefing up carcase measurement technology

The agtech startup launched with the handheld probe that shares the company's name, a device that became the first to receive commercial accreditation for a product measuring lamb IMF and then went on to gain accreditation as a hot carcase measurement tool for marbling in beef.

The company has also expanded their range in response to industry demand to include the MEQ Camera, and MEQ Live, a measurement tool for live animals that can help predict the value of a carcase.

The company's technology is now used in more than 30 processing sites across Australia.

Mr Carbone said the MEQ Live device was one great example of how the data gathered could be used to drive decisions.

"What we decided to do was to focus on long fed programs, Wagyu is a pretty clear space for that and now we're working our way down into Angus beef programs and commodity beef programs," he said.

"We've had a number of Wagyu businesses adopt the live technology and start deploying it to capture that data and begin to understand how they can act on that data commercially.

"We've seen some clients create new brands and we're seeing a lot more feedback to producers to drive better management of animals.

"In one case in a Wagyu supply chain they're processing their animals 90 days earlier because we're able to identify which of those animals it makes sense to feed long-term and which of them actually can be processed a bit earlier for potentially the same economics as a carcase which makes a tremendous difference to how you drive sustainable outcomes."

Mr Carbone said there were a lot of opportunities that came with these kinds of technologies.

"Now that we have a suite of hardware-enabled solutions with good adoption capturing a tremendous amount of valuable data that can be relied upon, you can really start to act on that data and drive better decisions up and down the supply chain and introduce opportunities for parts of the supply chain that might find value in the data that aren't necessarily a customer of the device itself," he said.

"That's starting to play out which is the way we think things should be going.

"An example would be the Coles CEO came out and talked about their success in their Coles Finest lamb and how that was very much attached to the data being collected by the smart sensor in their supply chain, which is the MEQ Probe."

Mr Carbone said he believed the MEQ's technologies could help give the Australian red meat industry an advantage in the global marketplace by providing additional transparency and consistency.

"Going back to farmers, richer data is something that they're really gravitating towards not just in Australia but everywhere... they want to be able to act on it and use that to make decisions around how to drive better genetics faster," he said.

Mr Carbone said artificial intelligence would also be used increasingly to combine different data sources.

"To me the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning and using data in a smart way, that's just beginning in this space in this industry," he said.

"What we're going to see is devices creating data creating new applications and these continuing to add a whole new level of value through the supply chain, we're just getting started here.

"Processing environments and environments that manage livestock are data rich places... but in the past the data hasn't been collected to be acted on.

"The ability to do that is becoming easier and easier and the outcome of what gets done is becoming more profound so you have these tailwinds at the macro level that are going to accelerate tremendously the opportunities in supply chains."

Mr Carbone said Australia will always be a key market for the company but they were starting to knock on the door of overseas markets.

"We've got a foothold in the United States so that will be a focus for us for sure going forwards and we may look at other places as well," he said.

"We've got a lot going on, we've got a lot of solutions and support and a serious amount of customers that really want to continue on and do quite a bit with us so it's really going to keep us busy in the next 12 months."