Measured approach key to tree success
TREEMETRICS is fast becoming one of the poster-boy companies of a new Ireland — one that knows how to succeed in the middle of a recession; how to find a niche by looking at an age-old rural-based industry with completely fresh eyes and then coming up with what seems to be the optimum solution for improving a primary function of that business.
In Treemetrics’ case, the age-old industry was forestry and the solution was quite simple in its most basic description: quantify what you actually have before you bring it to the market.
“At Treemetrics, we have this unique technology where we can better measure the forest,” says Treemetrics CEO Enda Keane. “We’ve developed a smart system for valuing the crop; we actually cut the trees through our own virtual cutting machine.
“We go out and we scan the trees. We collect a 3D model of the trees in the ground. Then we take those trees and cut them into logs and we look at the various options, and how those market options impact on the value of the crop.”
The company has been in existence for seven years, and it is a global enterprise, selling its unique product to private and public concerns from Ireland to Australia.
The idea of the business came to Keane and his friend Garret Mullooly, from their own direct experience of working in the forestry business.
“Garrett and myself were buddies,” says Macroom native Keane. “We studied forestry together in UCD and we got to know each other on the playing pitches of Dublin. After college, we both went in different directions but we used to meet up regularly at forestry events. We both felt that there had to be a better way of measuring forestry than what existed.”
The Eureka moment came, says Enda, when he saw a 3D scan for the first time of a building in America. A tree that stood in the car park of the building had been inadvertently scanned too and this caught the particular attention of Enda. He showed it to Garrett, and the two friends persuaded the Canadian owner of the scanning company to come over to Ireland to scan a piece of forest.
These initial results led to Enda and Garrett getting a research grant from COFORD (Competitive Forestry Research for Development), and things moved on from there.
Treemetrics’ first customer was the Austrian government. Long before they had perfected their system in 2005, the Austrians were so impressed with where Enda and Garrett were going with their idea, that they gave them an innovation award of €50,000, as well as giving them their first contract to scan the Vienna Woods, just outside the capital city.
They were honest from the start, says Enda, about the shortcomings of what they still had, but state governments around Europe continued to get excited about the Treemetrics’ approach and expressed this excitement in the form of financial support. That money helped their product develop as they forged ahead in continuing to iron out the bugs until they had a system that worked smoothly. The French government were next in line to put funds their way, followed by the Norwegian and British governments and then the Irish government in the form of Coillte in 2008.
“Farmers around the world aren’t called ‘forest owners’,” says Enda, “They’re farmers, and their crop is trees. In Finland, for example, all forest owners would classify themselves as farmers.
“Farmers in Ireland need to realise that the market needs certain products of different lengths and sizes.”
The three main products, says Enda, are the long plank, the short plank and the pulp wood. Each product gets a different price. Prices fluctuate on a regular basis, but as a rule of thumb, the long plank price is about three times the price of the pulp wood per cubic metre. Being able to accurately quantify your crop is crucial to getting the most out of your crop, allowing the farmer to get the maximum price for it. In the business of forestry, this had not been done until Keane and Mullooly came up with their system.
“In Ireland, we have this dilemma out there at the moment, because a lot of our forests that were planted in the late 1980s and early 1990s are coming due for first thinning, and some are even due for their second thinning. The farmers are sort of scratching their heads wondering what it’s worth exactly. Foresters are going in saying, ‘I’ll give you this price for it’. And to be fair to both the farmer and the forester, they’re both really scratching their heads and trying to figure out what the crop is actually worth.
“The forester is in a position where he’s taking a bit of a risk. He has to give the farmer a flat price per tonne. He doesn’t have the time to be going around assessing all these crops, because there isn’t a huge margin in the first thinning in any case.”
The Treemetrics approach allows everyone involved to get a clear and accurate picture of the quantity of the crop, which, in turn, will allow them to assess its value with accuracy. This, Enda argues, is as valuable to the buyer as it is to the seller. Wastage is minimised, and everyone gets or pays out a fair price.
As with all modern-day technological innovations, it’s in the course of rapid development. This system started with information being produced by scanning machines being placed on the ground. This is still the primary source of information, but it forms part of an increasingly complex procedure that involves accurate satellite imagery as well. Future developments are already under way at Treemetrics with the aim of producing an even more accurate satellite mapping system.
Where this leads to is another question altogether. Fianna Fáil TD Michael Moynihan recently complained about the intrusive nature of satellite imagery being wrongly used to identify areas covered in rushes, resulting in farmers receiving a reduction in their Single Farm Payments. What are the possible applications in the future for the technology being used by Treemetrics? “We get lots of quirky enquiries from people about using our machines to scan animals. The way the world of technology is going, I’ve no doubt that you’ll be able to walk around your farm, take a photograph of your cattle, and you’ll see it in 3D in your computer an hour later.”
He gives the example of the Kinect scanner used in Microsoft’s Xbox gaming system — a device that scans the body of the user 24 times per second: “All it takes is for some clever entrepreneur to convert the application to animal husbandry. I’d be surprised if isn’t being done now. There’s an explosion at the moment with sensors of all sorts — even in the smart phone.”
“One of the biggest problems in worldwide forestry is that of poor maps. A farmer might say ‘I’ve got 10 hectares of land’, but what is the quantity of the productive area of his land? What if I take out my road, my streams and bits of unproductive area like rocky outcrop? When I take all that into consideration, I might only have 8.5 hectares of productive forest.
“We believe that the very first use of it is for the forester or farmer to assess their crop with the latest and best possible satellite imagery.”
